My gosh, when we moved into this dump our first home the bathroom was shocking. After the contract was exchanged & before we moved in we repainted over the acid yellow walls in a soothing white (Dulux orchid), removed a strange built in dressing table complete with 2 mirrors that where surounded by light globes, removed a glass shower screen (very dirrrrty, also not safe as it didn't fit very well) & scrubbed heartily with industrial strength dissinfectant.
Is it making you shudder? This photo is after we did all of the above. We lived with this for about 18 months until we had our resources lined up to Renovate the Bathroom. Oh, Happy Day!!! Mr BC took a few days off work. It was the middle of summer, so we were able to bath the boys in the laundry tub, we also used the showers at the local pool. It was gross, but a small sacrifice to make.
We tore everything back & started afresh. This stage was a bit terrifying because although Mr BC has been blessed with natural handyman skills, & I have spent decades reading homeware magazines, neither of us had ever undertaken any such project before. I think we might have looked at each other & gulped a bit. The run of show went a bit like this;
After removing the walls, ensure the plumbing is working, & in the correct location. Although we discussed mixing it up, we didn't really have the room to move too much around. We needed to keep the bath rather than just have a shower - small children & resale value.
Take the opportunity to fix a pesky leak under the bath.
Install new plaster board.
Paint walls with blue water proofing agent.
Install new vanity - which we bought on ebay for $26. We bought the top separately for about $80. Install the tapware, another online bargain..
Install bath support.
Install bath - see list of Rookie Mistakes, below.
Install bath/shower hardware.
Lay floor tiles - see Rookie Mistakes.
Install Toilet.
Install wall tiles.
Install shower curtain & towel racks.
Book the electrician to come & install the fan/light/heater - final Rookie Mistake.
Rookie Mistakes
- The Bath. We needed a bath that would fit into this particular space, which wasn't exactly standard. The only new bath's that would fit (& that we could afford) where fibreglass, & exactly like the one we where getting rid of. So when we found a deep, enamelled cast iron bath second hand, we where pretty happy! It had a few worn spots, but we where happy to refinish it ourselves. We bought an air compressor from ebay, my father gifted us the paint attachments, we did our research, painted the bath, & installed it......and then after a few weeks, the paint started to peel off. Disaster! We where unable to fix it, & didn't want to respray it now that it was installed in the bathroom, so we peeled all of the paint off, patched up the few spots with a grout pen, & live with it, happily. Every so often we need to get the grout pen out, but I can live with that.
- The Floor Tiles. The first thing we bought for the bathroom reno where some beautiful 90cm square beige-y floor tiles. We protected them from monkey shenanigans for 12 months, & the day the tiles where to be layed.....they didn't fit. Somehow we had measured wrong, & we needed another 4 tiles. We tried matching on the web (this is called rookie mistakes, remember?) & then spent a day driving around to different tile retailers, all to no avail. At the 5th tile shop, we looked at each other & said 'fuck it' & bought new tiles on the spot. They where on sale so ended up costing us $90, total. Less than we spent on petrol that day, I'm sure. (between you & me, I like the new tiles better, anyway. Don't tell Mr BC)
- The Fan/Light/Heater that we origionally bought (on ebay) didn't fit into the roof cavity. We gifted it to some friends who are about to start their own bathroom reno, & bought another one, retail.
And voila! All worth it.
The cost of the bathroom was about $2800, all up - $600 of that was on tools that we will use again, renovating the rest of the house. It ended up taking just under 1 week. Our biggest splurge was the towel rack you can see to the right of the bath - we shopped around for ages trying to get he cost down & then decided that we saved so much money on the rest of the bathroom we could afford to splurge on a towel rack. We are still trying to find the perfect dark wood cabinet to store towels, but until then a coffee table will have to suffice. The huge mirror you can see was a hand me down from my parents, it used to hang in the dining room.
We are really, really happy with the results. It makes a huge difference to your day, having a civilised bathroom!
Mrs BC
xx
