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Bathroom Renovation

Bathrooms are often one of the smallest rooms in the house and also one of the most expensive to renovate. This is why many people leave the bathroom to last or put it off for another day. Many houses still have tried old bathrooms from the 50s through to the 80s that are past there used by date. In this example we will take you through a major renovation of a 1950s house bathroom. As you can see below this bathroom was well passed its used by date and water was entering the next room. Also this house did not have a hot water tank it had a 1950s instant hot water service and it was dangerous. The shower had not worked for years and old bath needed to be renewed.

Step one: design

- Consider the design for the space you have available. In our example an older lady lives in the home and easy access to the shower was a must. So we decided to add a new toilet, wider window for light and change the position of the vanity. Another consideration was to only have flick mixers so the water would be easy to turn on and off thus taps were eliminated. We were able to extend the room so we did this so we could have a larger shower and a cavity siding door.

Step two: demolition

We removed everything, all remaining tiles, old fitting, the bath and all the old plumbing. Because of the age of the house we knew that the wall lining had asbestos in them so we put on all our safety gear and removed this into an asbestos bin.

Step three: plumbing

- We had planned the bathroom out and so the first thing to do was to extend the room and then re-plumb the whole room. New copper pipe was put into place with the in wall flick mixers in place. Any new electrical wiring was also roughed in ready to be wired to the mains later. At this point we also added a new window at the end of the room after removing the two old timber windows.

Step four: walls and Bath

- Install the bath and re-line the walls with 6mm villa board and nail in place every 150mm. Care must be taken not to nail into a water pipe.

Step five: Drainage and Waterproofing

- Make sure that all drain pipes are in place and ready for the vanity, bath, and toilet and shower to be connected. Then water proof the whole room to 100mm up the walls except in the shower where you must waterproof up 2100mm high.

Step Six: Tile wall and floor

- Tile the complete room. Floor tiles first and then wall tiles on top of this. For more on laying ceramic tiles check out our pages on ceramic tiling. When we laid the floor and wall tiles, we also inserted an aluminium channel to hold the shower screen glass. Then grout all tiles.

Step Seven: fittings and fixtures

- Install your vanity and fixtures making sure that they are all sealed and all connecting pipes are not leaking. Test everything and add your lighting. See our lighting page.