Finishing Off

There was quite a bit of work to do to finish off the bathroom and the little laundry nook. I turned my attention to the laundry doors which of course were not a standard size.

Being a major tight-arse (and trying to see just how much we could save doing most of the work ourselves) I balked at getting the laundry doors custom made. So, I bought 2 standard doors that were only 40mm too wide and cut them down myself. Easy! Well...actually very fiddly and it took a day and a half to alter the 2 doors. In the end, I reckon I saved about $280 doing it this way and since no one pays me for my labour anymore I suppose it's not a bad return, all things considered!

Then there was the painting (ceiling throughout plus two walls in the laundry) plus the new main bathroom door and the two bi-fold doors for the laundry - which I decided would look great done in white gloss. Dumb dumb dumb!

Painting in progress

Painting - first coat on the laundry walls before the cornice is installed

 

Next job was to fix the cornices in the laundry, give them a coat of paint and install the shelves in the laundry area.

Cornices in and floating shelf brackets installed.

 

We'd used floating shelves before which we had bought from IKEA (believe it or not) and they turned out quite stable and solid. The two we bought for this job were from Bunnings and of course they had to be cut to length and weren't as stable as the Ikea ones. So, they had to be reinforced...more work for the pseudo-tradie!

 

Tub sealed in, shelves in, washing machine back in place, clothes basket hung - nearly there!

Next thing was door hanging. The laundry bi-folds proved problematic - we installed the track and hung the pivot leaf only to find that it fouled the door jamb and wouldn't open! I'd changed the brand of the track to a heavier duty model and the original design was for the old track...bummer. We had to modify the door jamb and repaint it - added another day or so but it solved the door opening issue.

Laundry doors installed without header strip or handle.

Finishing off with the timber & metal edged header strip and door handle certainly gave the laundry doors a finished look.

 

Laundry doors finished and main bathroom door hung and handles installed

While all this was going on, I spent a day or so working with my plumber mate installing a new (2nd hand) instantaneous gas water heater. Shannon the plumber had replaced it for an insurance job and had it lying around at his place so we used it. It cost us about half what a new unit costs - it was only a couple of years old and in good nick, so fingers crossed we get a few good years out of it.  

 

Unfortunately he had to upgrade the water and gas input lines to the heater as the old ones didn't meet the current specifications and building requirements. A bit more cost but all in place now. 

 

Below - A couple of shots of the end result.

The washup - what did it cost? All up, including all external labour, all materials down to every last screw, and including the replacement water heater with its associated plumbing work we did it for a tad over $11.5K.

 

Our budget estimate before we started was just over $15K so although it took a lot, lot longer to complete than we would have hoped, we did it 'not-on-time', but under budget.

So...basically we're happy with the outcome in terms of how the bathroom turned out and happy with what it cost us.

 

Happy days!