Replacement of a 30 year old bathroom
(Click the picture for the endresult)
The original bathroom was typical for the 70's and the colour of the bathroom equipment was blue. But, a lot of the tiles where cracked, it had a big hole in the side of the tiled wall under the bath (after a previous repair of the waste pipe) and the original toilet is gone - leaving a big hole in the floor.
It is a very small room but after measuring everything up and defining the requirements I found the optimal setup by the use of a lot of sketches and a paper (scale) model. Because I wanted to use only good but affordable materials I had to do some extensive research first.
At that time we still relied on a kitchen geyser for warm water and with the central heating unit also being end-of-life we planned to replace it all by one combi- heating unit. But that is another project.
I never did a DIY project like this (or like the heating unit) so all together it promissed to be quite a challenge.
To make things even more challenging, our family of 4 really needed the bathroom so we had to keep the shop open during the rebuilding.
Day 1: Humble beginnings
I started with letting all the water out of the central heating and removed the bathroom radiator. A few liters of thick black water poured out and squirted all over the wall when I loosened the nuts. Good start, as if there was not enough to clean up afterwards allready.
While I was at it, I took down the tiled wall underneath the bathtub (don't know the English word for it sorry) for easy access. It's an enamel bathtub so I had to be careful not to damage it.
Because the new sink was planned 10 cm more to the right I cut away the tiles and stone below in order to reveal the plumbing. It felt as if the stones in the wall where made of concrete and it only chipped instead of giving way. After removing only a mere 30 cm around the pipes it was allready time to clean up and take a shower.
Day 2: Relocated the sink
In order to create more working space I removed the sink altogether. Because the combination of Sink, planchet and mirror was still in good condition we decided to re-use it on our daughters room later. Her room is located next to the bathroom so in fact the combination will be moved to the other side of the same wall. For that I had to make new pipes for water and waste. And it made sense to do it then, when the wall was already cut open.
First I had to chip away more around the pipes and then I made a double waste pipe out of PVC. I planned to simply use T connectors and drill a pipe for warm and cold water straight through the wall to the other side when I figured just in time that if I did it like that, warm and cold would be switched on the other side of the wall. It had to be a little more sophisticated
Ofcourse a few joints where leaking water when I turned on the water again because of to much tension on the pipes. Unfortunately everything was in place and I had to solder very carefully not to burn the pvc too much. But after a small change everything was fine and after hanging the sink in its new position it was time to clean up again and call it a day.
Day 3: The bath tub to its new location
Because warm water still came from the kitchen downstairs and I had to reroute the pipes to the attic, I had to find the spot where the pipes emerge out of the staircase wall. With the help of a flash light I found them underneath the bathtub. I cut the waste pipe and removed the bathtub. Then I cut away the stone around the pipes. This time it was a softer kind of red brick but the cement, used to cover the pipes in the wall, sure made up for that with an unheard hardness. As a bonus bummer it appeared that the connection with the plumbing for the sink was not made at that location and that meant that I had to cut open the staircase wall too. This was not exactly on the agenda for this day so I went to the DIY store an bought a PVC muff with 2 rubber rings in it. I placed it between the two sawn of pieces of the waste pipe underneath the bathtub to make it temporarily waterproof again. With the help of some duck tape a temporarily solution was created to prevent water from flowing on the floor during "normal" use.
Because the day was only halfway over I decided to have a look at the old heating unit on the attic. The story on that can be found in this other project :-)
Day 4: Shopping !
Actually this day was not so productive but physically just as strenuous. I knew that once a year this big DIY store gives at least a 10% discount on everything and that time had come.
So although I didn't need all the materials at that time I bought them anyway in order to save some money. Earlier I made a Marquette from paper to have a better look on what it all was going to look like and we decided to go for white marble tiles for the walls and white and dark blue marble checkered tiles for the floor. All the bathroom equipment will be Pergamon / Camee coloured.
Finally at the end of the afternoon I arrived at the counter with two very full shopping karts and after the cashier damages the new sink by letting it drop against the kart she got so nervous that she forgot to charge for a number of smaller items. The result of that day was a savings of a little more then 200 euros on the original budget. Not bad for smart planning and a little luck.
After arriving at home with the goods (and that was quite the adventure because the car's belly almost touched the ground because of the extra weight) everything had to be stored. I used my daughter's bedroom for that because she had the most space. She wasn't very happy with it at the time but she has grown over it :-) After lifting so much weight of the cement, tiles and bathroom equipment I was happy to call it a day.
Day 5: The fun really started
Previous "work"days where saturdays but vacation has begun and I could really go for it. I used the first day of the holiday for finishing the central heating and the time had come to continue with the bathroom.
I started with the pipes. The new bath had to be located at the other side of the bathroom and warm water will have to come from the attic instead from the kitchen. For the same reason cold water must be brought to the attic.
Because I could only see a 12 mm pipe emerge from the bathroomwall and there really was a 15 mm pipe going into that wall beneath the stairs I had to cut out the whole pipe in the staircase wall. I started upstairs but it turned out that this switch from 15 to 12 mm was made at the first floor in order to connect the sink in the toilet.
In the batroom I made pipes to the place where the new faucet had to come. All this cutting in the walls costed a lot of time so I connected the new pipes temporary to the existing ones coming out of the wall.
Now I only had to clean up the room and with the help of some plastic and ducktape the bathroom was usable for the family again.
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