The Need to Renovate

Renovating a Bathroom During Covid19 Lockdown

Hi All

I've composed a couple of blogs over the past several years - mainly to inform friends about the major renovation of our current home and about our overseas trips.

By comparison, this is only a very short blog comprising mainly photos of the current project as it progressed from demolition of the old bathroom to construction of the new.

We've been meaning to update this old bathroom since we completed the upstairs reno but things kept getting in the way. We've put in a new ceiling in the downstairs (the area we call "the flat") and painted throughout - but the bathroom was always the "we'll do that one day" thing. We had removed the old wallpaper and painted the un-tiled parts of the bathroom walls but that was about it.

The bathroom incorporated a laundry of sorts - a washing machine plumbed into the side of the vanity unit (very poorly I might add with exposed copper pipes and waste water inlet), a toilet with the old plastic cistern and a cracked pan, and a shower with a hob that you had to step over to enter. The shower screen was that old brown stippled glass with wire reinforcing in it and beautiful gold anodised aluminium trim. All in all, very 1970's. Understandable I suppose as it was built in 1978, so no surprises there.

Tiles were little 30mm square mozaics on the floor with lovely cream coloured tiles to half way up the walls. There was so much fall on the floor that you literally walked downhill to the floor waste and uphill once you passed it! All in all, it was very much in need of a compete make-over.

We had our builder friend give us a rough quote to do the whole job and at somewhere between $25K and $35K it seemed reasonable. After all there was demolition, plumbing work, electrical, tiling, painting and fit out to consider. Also we'd be completely replacing all the PC items - vanity, toilet, shower screen, all accessories and installing a small separate laundry behind some folding doors. Another friend renovated a smaller bathroom with no laundry and spent well over $35K so our builder was in the ball park.

In typical Phil fashion, I foolishly decided that I would do most of the work that I could do myself (within the current building regulations) and...I was hoping that I could do it for about half the cost of what the builder estimated to be the final amount. Oh, what a pipe dream!!! Here is our renovation photo journey....

The original bathroom - vanity and toilet

The shower recess - love that wallpaper (and the frilly curtains)