Author’s note: This journal entry was written on October 11, 2022 however the photos are from the day itself.

The house project we’ve elected to tackle this month is replacing the living room radiator. We bought the radiator for £77 and got the valves for free (normally £19.99 but Screwfix had an offer), and we watched a video on how to do the whole thing. It seemed simple enough but just incase we wrote down all of the steps. We drained down the system using our garden hose, a modified bubble tea straw and some duct tape, as well as using a series of bowls and buckets to empty any leaking water. It was a little bit stressful but we managed to get through it. We spent time scraping wallpaper off of the wall where the old radiator had been and I’m pretty certain that these radiators have never been replaced because that’s the only spot in the house where we’ve come across wallpaper.

After the wallpaper was removed we painted over that section of the wall and then worked on replacing the valves and trying to hang the new radiator using the existing screw placements. Although we measured the radiator carefully and everything else seemed to be going well, the new radiator appears to be just ever so slightly deeper than the old one and we’re not able to fit the existing pipes to the new radiator.

So, rather frustratingly, we’ve decided to call up a plumber to see if they are able to fit the radiator for us because neither myself nor Alex know what we’re doing when it comes to actually doing pipework. In an ideal scenario we’ll find someone who can do it this week for less than £100 but who knows! We capped off the valves for now and refilled the system so we can have hot water until we get someone in to do the radiator for us.