Bathroom Makeover

by Alan Cole · Saturday, October 31st, 2020

Tags: DIY

I’ve said it before but “nothing is ever easy”

Bathroom Blues

We’ve been wanting to re-do our bathroom for a while now. It hasn’t been done since we built the house in 2003. When it was fitted back then we had no money left after building the house so did so on a very tight budget.

It’s been fine since then but we felt an upgrade was overdue. We kept putting it off though as we couldn’t decide what to do with it, couldn’t afford it and didn’t have the time to do it.

A week off and lockdown meant our holiday was cancelled. We were confined to the house and there was little we could do, some DIY was in order.

We thought that a simple upgrade would be sufficient, wouldn’t cost too much and would be quick and easy to do. But, nothing is ever easy.

Electrical Bathroom Appliances

We had an electrician visit to replace the heated towel radiator. This was actually the main impetus for the makeover. We asked him to wire it up to an electronic timer. This means we can now have the towel rail come on for a couple of hours in the morning. It warms the towels and the room during off peak electricity rates.

We also had the electrician wire up a new cabinet above the sink. There was a light here at one point. This was removed when it stopped working many years ago and had never been replaced so there had been a hole in the wall with some wires poking out for a while. We’d got used to it but I guess it did look a bit of a mess!

The new cabinet gives us some storage space, a nice big mirror, a cool LED light and even has a demisting heating element built into the mirror. We also asked the electrician to wire an electric toothbrush charger into the inside of the cabinet.

Tiles

One small job that also needed doing was fixing a tile that had come off around the windowsill.

Bath Panel and Storage

Next on the plan was a new bath panel. We decided to keep the existing bath, basin and toilet. A new bath panel would transform things though. We bought one with doors that open so that we could make use of some of the space under the bath. It’s a perfect place to store cleaning products and such like.

Of course, it didn’t quite fit so had to be cut to size. I had to cut it out around the skirting board as well. Also, it didn’t want to fit into the recess around the bath so that took some fiddling. I had to widen the recess by sanding it down, and had to cut some notches into the panel so as to get it to fit. It’s made of fibre board too so all the cuts had to be sealed with PVA and painted.

A new colour

Talking of paint, the ceiling and walls were of course painted. A new colour always makes things feel refurbished. The woodwork was sanded, primed and painted too.

Sealing

We couldn’t add a new bath panel without removing the old silicone sealant. I then had the re-seal the bath of course.

A Taller Bathroom Cupboard

Anna also order a new cupboard to match the new bath panel. I thought I’d pretty much finished but checked with Anna that it was where she wanted it before I fixed it to the wall. She looked at it for a while. She ‘ummed and ahhed’ and then said “can you make it a bit taller?!”. Maybe I wasn’t finished after all.

I headed into the shed. Here I dismantled a packing crate that our new stove had come in (I knew it was worth keeping). A little while later, with the addition of a few other offcuts of wood and some screws, it was transformed into a plinth to raise the cupboard. This now needed sanding to tidy the wood up a little. It then needed pricing and a couple of coats of paint. It’s not quite ready as I write this as I’m waiting for a coat of paint to dry. The cabinet however has been cut to fit around skirting and once the plinth is painted it should be an easy job to put it in place and fix to the wall.

With that done, we have a new bathroom!

It was of course a little more work than we first anticipated. It was of course not as easy as we’d hoped. It was of course more expensive that we wanted. However, it was of course worth it and it’s nice to have a new, fully functional bathroom.

We may not have been able to go on holiday. We may not have been able to holiday in Wales or even leave the house. I couldn’t exercise due to my rib injuries but we do at least feel as though we have achieved something.