Tear down the gates!

It's a bit of a surprise to arrive and find the old gates already taken down. But that's a good thing because it means that the new gate is ready to go up. The team doing this metal work are the same people who will be setting up the fire escape stairs as well.

Honey, you look different today. Yeah, I feel so bare without my gates.

When we asked for a lightweight steel gate, we were not really expecting something of this heft.

It took the guys a fair bit of effort to lift the gate upright, and then slowly, through a combination of the principles of simple machines (levers, wheels) plus a huge dose of sheer brute force, to inch the structure towards the hinge.

Once the gate is in place, a final check is made on the alignment.

The gate is welded on the hinge, which had itself earlier been welded to the concrete column.

A few days earlier, the same guys were here to weld chequered plates onto the existing drain gratings. The chequered plates will later be coated with a layer of non-slip paint. This will provide a safer surface should children choose to walk over the drain gratings on their way in and out.

With the ceiling boards in place, the electricians can proceed to install the lighting fixtures in the classrooms. Besides them, we also have the plumbers and the painters doing their work in here.

The classroom lights are designed to fit nicely with the grid ceiling system. First the housing is aligned with the grid and fastened.

And this is what the finished light looks like, with the refectors and fluorescent tubes installed.

The painters completed the first coat of paint on the 2nd storey, and then moved down to work on the 1st storey.

The painter's creed must be to paint around any obstacle, hence our guy diligently goes around the tiles that are stacked against that part of the wall. Let's hope he comes back to that part again after the tiles have been removed.

In the adult toilet, the toilet bowl has finally been installed.

The children's toilet bowl looks a little overwhelmed by the space of the toilet, and this is one of the smaller toilets. It probably needs the wash basin and mirror to occupy some of the space.

Unfortunately the hardware people delivered the wrong wash basins, but happily the mistake was discovered before any of this was installed in the children's toilet. Surely no one can possibly mistake this gigantic specimen for a child-sized sanitary fitting. So it's back into the packaging box for these items, and we'll hopefully get the correct delivery tomorrow.