Bricks and mortar

We have left the Chinese New Year holidays behind, and the place can finally be described as a hive of activity. The demolition team had already done most of their work, so it's time for the bricklayers to move in.

BEFORE: The full-height glass panels had to be removed because their origins were unknown. We had no way of finding out whether the glass was tempered or laminated. In the end, it was safer to discard the glass and restore the original facade.

AFTER: So there will be a door at the front, and a window at the left, of what will be the classroom for the N1 children.

AFTER: Similarly at the side, the glass panels have been removed, to be replaced by a half-height brick wall and two windows to let in lots of light.

BEFORE: In the main hall, the sliding door glass panels have to be removed and walled up, due to fire safety regulations. The fire escape staircase will be constructed just outside.

AFTER: The bricklayers doing their work to wall up this section. It's like block play on a gigantic scale.

The electrical people finished most of the work on the 2nd storey, and have now moved down to the first floor. Meanwhile, over the past two days, the air-con team have been busy removing the old air-con equipment. Having completed that part of the work, they are now starting to install the insulation, pipes and casings for the new air-con units.

Our air-con guys busy at work. These are the same people who we called upon whenever we needed new air-con units to be installed at Mothergoose.

Tiling of the toilets on the 2nd storey is all done. The tilers have now been assigned to get the 1st storey toilets done up. Soon, we'll be making a trip to a showroom to select the sanitary fittings. Exciting stuff!

This is the K2 class toilet, with all the tiling done up.

Unfortunately, the non-slip tile that we selected previously is available only in limited quantity, because it's a discontinued series. Probably because it's too tough on the feet! So we decided to use those rougher tiles in the 1st storey toilets for the playgroup and nursery children. The K1 and K2 toilets are fitted with the second choice non-slip tiles, which are still pretty rough.

Is this Hotel Orion? No, no. Just the adult toilet on the 1st storey. Looks like a happy place!

Choosing non-slip tiles

Since we have been given the opportunity to redo the toilets from scratch, we decided to install non-slip tiles in consideration for the safety of children, rather than placing another layer of anti-slip floor mats over the toilet floors, which we used to do. This will also improve hygiene since it allows aunty to wash the toilet floors more thoroughly.

So Joe has already brought in the main bulk of the tiles that we will be using. However, the non-slip tile samples that he has chosen for the toilet floors are not sufficiently rough. Perhaps people who are not in our line of work tend to underestimate the propensity of young children to slip and fall under the most innocuous of circumstances.

The eclectic mix of tiles that have been brought on site.

So we headed nearby to where Joe claimed was the showroom with one of the widest range of tiles in the country.

Narrowing down our selection to the roughest few pieces in the entire showroom.

This one looks even rougher than the surface of the moon (okay maybe that's overstating it by a bit).

The showroom provided a sample of each tile for us to bring back and consider. Just from the photo you can almost feel the texture of the tiles.

But the real test comes when the tiles are wet. Even under a shower of water, they should provide a decent level of grip.

And so we have a winner! Full Bodied Porcelain with Shade Variation. The cost is slightly higher than what we originally budgetted for, and it goes terribly with our white glazed wall tiles, but hey, function over form!

At the showroom, Joe said that the best way to decide was to test the tiles barefoot. He is right. Conventional wisdom suggests that the finger should be more sensitive to the textures of the tiles, but surprisngly it was actually the toe that detected the difference in grip between the two samples. If anything, this experience has led to a newfound respect for toe neurons.