Bathroom Renovation

Bigredmonster

I'm planning on renovating our home one room at a time while we still live here. Was thinking of starting with the bathroom. It will be complete renovation including bath, sink, toilet, windows and floor then finished with tiling and plastering. It has one gas central heating radiator in there, any recommendations should i leave it or find an alternative. Any tips or recommendations will be appreciated thanks

FreeBear

Main recommendation - Insulate the walls. If you have a cavity, 50mm of Celotex/Kingspan will do wonders, and if you can wrap 25mm around the window reveals, even better. Any radiators mounted under windows can be moved to another wall - Saves pumping heat in to a cold(ish) wall. Does mean having to extend/move waste pipes in the bathroom, but that is a small price to pay.

I'm slowly adding 75mm to all the walls here upstairs. The one room that is already done is much warmer and easier to heat.

Gavin83

How extensive will this renovation be? How old is the house/bathroom?

Don’t scrimp on the fixtures/fittings. This obviously depends a little on how long you plan to stay there for but it’s likely to be 20 years+ before this bathroom is done so you want something that’ll last.

Moisture is a major problem in a bathroom so make sure you choose the materials wisely. If you’re painting pick a mould resistant paint and remember tiles aren’t waterproof, you need some waterproofing underneath, either tanking or a waterproof board.

When it comes to tiling remember the walls are unlikely to be completely straight.

I’ve just completely renovated (as in subfloor up, brick exposed) a bathroom and I’m just about to start another and it is a fairly major job. Good luck.

For one last tip (which goes for any room really) nothing is quite as hard as you imagine it to be. You can certainly manage the vast majority of the work yourself. The only jobs I didn’t do myself were the plastering and anything that I wasn’t allowed to do or I needed certs for, such as the hot water cylinder replacement. Google/YouTube/forums are your friend.

Bigredmonster

Gavin83 said:

How extensive will this renovation be? How old is the house/bathroom?

Don’t scrimp on the fixtures/fittings. This obviously depends a little on how long you plan to stay there for but it’s likely to be 20 years+ before this bathroom is done so you want something that’ll last.

Moisture is a major problem in a bathroom so make sure you choose the materials wisely. If you’re painting pick a mould resistant paint and remember tiles aren’t waterproof, you need some waterproofing underneath, either tanking or a waterproof board.

When it comes to tiling remember the walls are unlikely to be completely straight.

I’ve just completely renovated (as in subfloor up, brick exposed) a bathroom and I’m just about to start another and it is a fairly major job. Good luck.

For one last tip (which goes for any room really) nothing is quite as hard as you imagine it to be. You can certainly manage the vast majority of the work yourself. The only jobs I didn’t do myself were the plastering and anything that I wasn’t allowed to do or I needed certs for, such as the hot water cylinder replacement. Google/YouTube/forums are your friend.

Thanks! It's 90s house. Not too big. I was thinking of starting with new windows then move on to the fixtures etc. Doing it in phases. Would you keep a normal central heating radiator or find an alternative? Thanks

jonnydeppiwish!

Bigredmonster said:

Gavin83 said:

How extensive will this renovation be? How old is the house/bathroom?

Don’t scrimp on the fixtures/fittings. This obviously depends a little on how long you plan to stay there for but it’s likely to be 20 years+ before this bathroom is done so you want something that’ll last.

Moisture is a major problem in a bathroom so make sure you choose the materials wisely. If you’re painting pick a mould resistant paint and remember tiles aren’t waterproof, you need some waterproofing underneath, either tanking or a waterproof board.

When it comes to tiling remember the walls are unlikely to be completely straight.

I’ve just completely renovated (as in subfloor up, brick exposed) a bathroom and I’m just about to start another and it is a fairly major job. Good luck.

For one last tip (which goes for any room really) nothing is quite as hard as you imagine it to be. You can certainly manage the vast majority of the work yourself. The only jobs I didn’t do myself were the plastering and anything that I wasn’t allowed to do or I needed certs for, such as the hot water cylinder replacement. Google/YouTube/forums are your friend.

Thanks! It's 90s house. Not too big. I was thinking of starting with new windows then move on to the fixtures etc. Doing it in phases. Would you keep a normal central heating radiator or find an alternative? Thanks

Do the windows need replacing (I’d hate to live with those brown framed ones!)? Is it just some panes that have misted?

I have a bathroom where we’ve removed the bath and just have a large shower now. There’s electric underfloor heating which costs about £2.50 a month to keep going (I’m still on a 2 year fix til Sep 23 😉). Even if it’s then £10 per month, it’s worth it to keep the room dry, and there’s nothing worse thank cold tiles when you use the toilet in the middle of the night!

We set it to 18 degrees and it’s about perfect - not too cold, not too warm.

We also replaced the towel rail with a new one (GCH) so the towels dry as well.

It probably the one room I wouldn’t skimp in heating.

Doozergirl

Bigredmonster said:

Gavin83 said:

How extensive will this renovation be? How old is the house/bathroom?

Don’t scrimp on the fixtures/fittings. This obviously depends a little on how long you plan to stay there for but it’s likely to be 20 years+ before this bathroom is done so you want something that’ll last.

Moisture is a major problem in a bathroom so make sure you choose the materials wisely. If you’re painting pick a mould resistant paint and remember tiles aren’t waterproof, you need some waterproofing underneath, either tanking or a waterproof board.

When it comes to tiling remember the walls are unlikely to be completely straight.

I’ve just completely renovated (as in subfloor up, brick exposed) a bathroom and I’m just about to start another and it is a fairly major job. Good luck.

For one last tip (which goes for any room really) nothing is quite as hard as you imagine it to be. You can certainly manage the vast majority of the work yourself. The only jobs I didn’t do myself were the plastering and anything that I wasn’t allowed to do or I needed certs for, such as the hot water cylinder replacement. Google/YouTube/forums are your friend.

Thanks! It's 90s house. Not too big. I was thinking of starting with new windows then move on to the fixtures etc. Doing it in phases. Would you keep a normal central heating radiator or find an alternative? Thanks

Initial focus should be on energy saving, so even if you have cavity wall insulation, I'd still go for a layer of insulated plasterboard on the walls as CWI just isn't enough any more.
 

I would also choose a regular central heating radiator for decent output.  You can either put a towel rail over the rad, or there are modern panel rads that you can attach bars to the front of.  

Failing that, chrome towel rails have terrible heating outputs.  An identical heated towel rail in white has *double* the output of a chrome one.  I haven't specified chrome towel rails for clients in nearly a decade.  Clients sometimes have a perception that white isn't 'cool' but it's much more classy than chrome and chrome simply is not fashionable and hasn't been for a long time, so there's no loss.  

Re: electric underfloor heating.  It might be a 'nice to have' to have warm feet, but it is a terrible idea as the main heating source, even for a small room, given the cost of electricity. 

https://www.thermosphere.com/learning-zone/running-cost-calculator

This puts their own product at 49p a day for just *3 hours* a day of heating *3 square metres* of floor in a house built to current regs - that will be *89p a day come October*.  The same amount of energy in gas would be 25p, maybe 27p given the lesser efficiency of a gas boiler.  

If you are worried about having cold tiles in the night, just don't put tiles onto the floor.  Something like LVT is hardy and doesn't sap the heat from your skin.