To get to the stage where we could begin using the small bathroom again (all shiny and new) was a BIG deal for us...a HUGE, MASSIVE deal. Why? Well whilst it was out of action we had to use the master bathroom, which was really quite gross. You can see all of our 'before' pics on our House Tour page here, but for ease here it is again...
And just in case you are thinking 'ohhh it's not that bad', here is a close up of our bath
...yep it ain't a pretty picture
As for the toilet, well I am just glad (for your sakes) that I didn't get a picture of the actual bowl itself. It was so disgusting that I was genuinely worried the girls would refuse to use it...it was feral! But to my great surprise they didn't moan about it once! So when we could see the bathroom taking shape and slowly but surely morphing into a usable room, from the frame of gorgeous silky oak that we took it back to, it was awesome! An end was in sight to the use of our 'pink princess' bathroom suite next door. However all moaning aside we are actually very lucky that we had a second bathroom to use while we were doing up the other one, it has obviously made it far easier to manage, especially with the two girls.
Anyhow back to the issue at hand of finishing the small bathroom; the first job was to get the walls re-sheeted. Our chippie Nick-Nack took care of this for us and did an awesome job - as always.
The taps were fixed by our plumber (the hot and cold pipes were back to front) and as it wasn't to code it had to be rectified.
The beauty of taking off the damaged and uneven panels (apart from the obvious of seeing what the bones of the building are like underneath all the panelling) is that before you re-sheet, you can add noggins in areas that need support for things like shower rails and towel rails. (I say this in hindsight because with this bathroom we forgot to add a noggin for our towel rail to be attached to. It doesn't particularly matter on this occasion as we can attach the one we want to a stud, but if we had have thought about it at the start we could have added a few options across the walls and not had to stick to one wall and one stud. As we keep saying...this is the learning house).
Nick-Nack's work is so neat and totally flawless, he gets picked on by the other tradies for taking his time, but by golly his work is top notch.
The new shower cavity re-built...even though this is just the base sheeting it already looks amazing, like a totally new room.
Once the sheeting had gone up and was finished, the next guy to come in was our wet sealer. Again this was a job that we could have done ourselves but if you get it wrong you are stuffed. Once that room is sealed and the floor and wall tiles go in that's it. A leak in the wet sealing would be a disaster in terms of finding the leak, pulling up the tiles, correcting the leak, correcting the damage and re-tiling. So we thought we'd leave this to the pro's.
Wet seal and shower hebel block down, looking like a real shower already...next job - tiling!
I loved watching the tiles go down, Bin would often turn around to find me staring at him work, he would just roll his eyes at me, laugh and carry on.
The screed going down for the floor of the new shower base, Bin rang me the day after the room was finished and said 'please tell me it drains well'...it does!
I couldn't help but photograph this trim, I just wish the koalas and kangaroos were visible when it was put in..Col, funnily enough, is glad that they aren't.
Our feature tile going up, I could seriously watch tiling going up all day..sad but true.
Last part going in, the tiles in the hebel block shower edge
Everything finished and grouted...before the cleaning off obviously!
Once this was all done, we were on the home stretch, all that was left to do was for Greggy our plumber to come in and fit all the new 'stuff'. We purchase all our products ourselves to keep costs down, just because the tradies have trade accounts doesn't mean they will be getting cheap trade prices. Often their suppliers don't get the huge discounts bigger stores give so this way we can keep control over what products we want and often keep the cost a bit lower too. However, everything we buy for our fit outs are always checked first with our tradies. When we first started this project we had our sparkie tell us which fans and lights we should and shouldn't buy and why. They are the experts, the ones who have constant call outs to fix dodgy products that the shop said were great etc. There is nothing worse than going for a bargain, or product you love design wise only to find out it is rubbish. So although we source it all ourselves, we check first and buy later to make sure we are getting a quality product that isn't going to need replacing in 6 months. So far we have picked ok! Occasionally we will go through one of our tradies to get a particular product that we can't source ourselves but there will be more on that when we do our kitchen re-fit post.
The last thing I just HAD to add to this page is a little note about the shower. It is soooo darn cool. The little LCD screen you can see (last picture below) is powered by a mini hydro electrical component inside. It tells you what temperature the water is at and how many litres you are using. In addition to that the screen itself glows a deep blue if it's cold, a vivid lilac for the 'just right' temperature and bright red if the water is too hot. So the kids can tell instantly whether the temperature is OK for them to step under....fantastic!
So here we have it...all finished and we love it! You can find the specs to all our products on the Design Book page. Hope you like it as much as we do!
Before and afters...
K x
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