Advice on how to get a room square

rob7475

Morning,

I'm going to be refitting our bathroom soon. Currently, the room isn't perfectly square. The bath is at one end of the room surrounded by 3 walls but the two short edges don't sit flush to the wall due to the back wall not being square.

I'm going to be taking the room back to brick before boarding and tiling so it's an opportunity to get the wall square. The back wall is around 1.7m long and to get it square, I would need to move one end of it in by 6cm. I'll be using tile backer board and will probably dot and dab it to the wall. How thick can I go with the dabs safely? I would need to have 80mm dabs at one end tapering down to a normal 20mm or so at the other end. Would 80mm be too much bearing in mind I'll be tiling the walls?

I'm open to other ideas on how to get things square. In the diagram, the black lines are the current walls, the red line is what i'm looking to achieve.

stuart45

I'd batten it out myself. Set a batten each end of the wall so the room is square, then run a line though to set the rest of the battens.

rob7475

Thanks Stuart, I did think about battening it out. Would 25mm battens be OK - I don't want the wall to come out too far at the right hand side due to lmitied space in the bathroom? Also, what would be the best way to set the battens off the brick wall as I move across to the other end to make everything square?

I do like the idea of battening it out as it means I can get some insulation in the gap.

stuart45

25mm is fine for the right hand end. Get yourself a bag of plastic shims as well so you can get the battens spot on for plumb.

After fixing the 25mm batten you need to work out how far the left hand one needs to come out and then fix that one to the wall. If you need to come out as much as 85mm, you could fix a bit of 2x2 to the wall first and then fix another batten the right thickness to that. Once you have the two end battens set you can run the string lines through which will give you the exact measurements you need for the intermediate battens.

Take your time and try and get the battens as straight as possible, as this makes fixing the boards a lot easier. If the battens aren't straight enough loosen the screws a bit a shim behind and re-tighten them.

What thickness boards are you using?

rob7475

That's great advice, thanks Stuart. I'll be using 12.5mm boards - either hardiebacker, aquapanel or the lightweight backerboards depending on what's on offer at the time :-)

grumpy_codger

I don't want the wall to come out too far at the right hand side due to limited space in the bathroom? …I do like the idea of battening it out as it means I can get some insulation in the gap.

Ignoring the insulation, if you want to save space you can possibly have no batten on the right hand side and just use dry wall adhesive to fix the plasterboard directly to the wall instead.