Progress with bathrooms

We have worked quite a bit with the bathrooms since our Christmas break and they are now starting to be finalised.

With the en-suite bathroom, we first of all finished the painting of the plasterboard walls. The next job was to make the two windows, one for the toilet and one for the shower. The toilet window was made by using hardwood for the frame and using a recycled pane of glass (from the double glazed windows we got for free in Norway). We also used a hardwood frame for the window in the shower, but here the glass is made up of 10 glass bricks that we bought in a garage sale down in Cremorne for $10. We had to get some new aluminium spacers, but otherwise we could recycle the rest. The glass bricks are set so that they become level with the inside of the wall, thus not getting a window sill in the shower that would get wet all the time.

After finalising the windows we waterproofed the shower walls and floor (sorry now picture of this) and then started tiling the walls. Having completed that wall tiling, the next job was to water proof the rest of the room to Australian standards and then put down the electric floor heating cable. We are using a DEVI mat for this job (for those of you are very interested, here is a link to the DEVI website that describes the product).

The heating mat was then covered with the tile glue and left to dry.  So here are the pictures:

Waterproofing floor to wall edges and the floor in the shower

Window in toilet, with view to the vegetable garden

Tiles in the shower, part 1

Tiles in the shower, part 2

Floor heating cables - part 1

Floor heating cables - part 2

Floor heating cables covered in tile glue - part 1

Floor heating cables covered in tile glue - part 2

At the time of writing, we have started putting the floor tiles down, but we will get back to this in the next update.

As for the other bathroom, progress have taken place there too. Again, after finishing the painting we built the frame for the actual bathtub. When doing this and purchasing the bathtub we discovered that a mistake had been made when we put the plumbing in the ground. We can easily blame the designer, but neither the plumber nor we thought about it either when the work was done. Basically what happened is that we placed the drain for the bathtub at the wrong end of the bathtub. So in order to find a solution, we had to lift the bathtub a little higher than normal so that a pipe would have enough fall from the drain in the bathtub to the pipe in the floor.

Because of this we had to move the taps a bit higher and thus make a bit of a hole in the wall !! Anyway, it is now fixed (as the pictures will show). After making the frame, we started on the shower, first with water proofing and then tiling. Then the plumber came and put the bathtub in, which led us to finish the area around the bathtub. We haven't yet put down the floor heating or floor tiles, but this will be done once the other bathroom has been completed (which is hopefully tomorrow the 7th of Feb).

So, again some pictures:

Waterproofing wall next to where the bathtub will be.

The rest of the water proofing around the bath tub - before the actual bathtub went into the frame.

Tiling in the shower partly completed - shows the membrane on the wall (the green stuff).

Tiling completed - 1

Tiling completed - 2

Bathtub in place with plumber finalising the job.

Insulation packed around the bathtub to keep the water warmer longer

Cement sheet installed so that the tiles can be fixed

Repair of plasterboard on the wall where the taps had to be moved.

Water proofing completed - part 1

Water proofing completed - part 2 (where the sink will be). The main reason we have water proofed such a large area behind the sink is that the wall is not straight, thus the sink will not be flush with the wall, and as such water may very well go behind the sink and down the wall, thus needing to water proof it to be on the safe side.

And we have also tiled the toilet floor and it looks like this:

And the window has also been done:

OK, that is where we are at the bathrooms for the moment - more will follow.

Any problems, please email webmaster. This page was last updated 24/07/2008