Refitting the Bathroom 3. We Will Rebuild!

One long weekend (and it felt very long!) and we've made some good progress on our bathroom project. Here's a quick whiz through of what we've achieved so far:

We finished gutting the place. The old suite was removed on Saturday and we stripped out the floor boards too. As I mentioned at the start, a rotting floor was one of the motivations for getting this project done - it was good to see it go.

Gutted...

We burst a pipe. Yes, you read that correctly! In getting the floor up we cut one of the pipes to the central heating system (the nearest pipe in the photo above) and so had the boiler off until the very kind plumber could come and solder it back together for us three days later. Oops! It turns out our pipes run so close to the floor boards that they touch which might explain why we get so many creaks and bangs as the heating warms up.

We laid new chip board, complete with drawings of where all the pipes are to stop some poor sod in the future making the same mistake. In the process we've also found that the joists are a medley of heights so there's no way the floor will ever be flat. Useful.

The toilet in a temporary setting while we sorted out the new floor boards

We replaced the toilet with its new "back to wall" counterpart. The cistern will be hidden inside one of the new cupboards once all is done.

We've tiled the wall behind where the bath is going. We figured this would be much easier without the bath in place. With a little more time we'd have tiled further but the deadline of going back to work was looming over us so...

First wall of new tiles all stuck in place

We fitted the new bath. By 10.30 the night before we went back to work we were both able to wash off all the plaster dust, tile adhesive and general dirt to become presentable again! We're feeling very grateful that we decided to use speedfit plumbing as Joe managed to get most of the fittings for the bath and shower together in about half an hour.


There's lots more to do yet, but it feels like we might be on the homeward stretch now - we're rebuilding rather than tearing down anyway. *Sigh of relief*