DIY Bathroom Top Tips

My bathroom is close to being finished after many months. It was quite difficult because I was installing it into a room that was previously a bedroom (no pipes) and the fact that I was changing the hot water system quite drastically at the same time. Anyway, most of the issues you will come across can be avoided with some simple tips.

1. Plan, plan, plan. Get some graph paper (there was some on the back of a Wickes bathroom booklet I had) and get the measurements of the suites you are looking at. You will be amazed at how things fit or don't compared to what you assume. Go and look at some of your friend's bathrooms to make sure you haven't forgotten something like a towel rail or a toilet!


2. If you are trying to meet existing soil pipes or the like then ensure you know how much space the pipe fittings will take up. For instance, your toilet cannot go right against the soil stack because there will be no room for the fittings. The toilet soil fittings will be the worst because they are the largest but don't underestimate the annoyance you can get with a waste pipe that is perfect for the room but somehow has to get past a load of wood under the floor or such like. The builder didn't design the house around your choice of bathroom so some thought at this stage will help a lot.


3. Curved shower trays or baths can cause fun with the floor tiling. If, for example, you are using natural stone tiles you will need a special cutter to make the curves. Are you sure you want to choose them?


4. Shop around. There is loads of stuff available and savings to be made. Also, you will find some items in certain stores that are perfect for you that might not be available in other stores. Web sites are pretty good for trawling these things.


5. Before you install anything, plan where all the pipes and wires are going to go. There is nothing worse than thinking you will worry about a certain pipe later when you install the bath over all the floorboards you need to lift up!! For the most part you should install all services before even thinking about putting in the furniture.


6. Most of you will not have the luxury of a false wall to hide pipes behind and it is unlikely that all the walls you will use for the bath, toilet and sink are external for quick exit of waste pipe. Think VERY carefully about where the waste pipes will go, you do NOT want to be cutting loads of 40mm holes in floor joists and most of you won't have a drill that will fit anyway. Also, trying to fit wastes from bath too pipe next to joists can be difficult so measure where the bath and shower tray wastes need to go and check that you will have plenty of room to move the waste around to fit. Under my bath, the waste was too tall and I had to cut floorboards away - be warned.


7. Run the pipes and fix them if required as close as you can get to where they need to go. You can use flexible hoses from pipe to taps and toilet cistern if you want so don't worry too much. If you are reusing pipe, you will need to make loads of measurements to see whether a flex-hose will do the job or whether you will need to do some more major modifications on the existing pipework.


8. The bath and shower tray should usually go down on the floor before tiling (unless it is a free-standing unit that sits on the main floor) so these can go in first. Adjust the height of the bath so that you get a full height tile or two up to the window sill if you have one. You don't want 1.75 tiles from bath to sill!! Work out roughly where the tiles need to come to with an edging strip to correctly meet the horizontal tiles on the sill because it is much easier adjusting the bath feet that mucking around with slivers of tiles. In my case my sill had a lot of room for play because it had no internal sill so I can pack it up to suit my bath height.


9. With the bath in the right place, ensure it is spirit levelled in both directions (L-R and Front-Back) and then draw a line under it against the wall. Fix a length of 2 x 1 timber up to this line so the bath can sit on the wood (as well as its feet) and not flex (cracking the tile joins).


10. Ensuring the bath will not have to come out for any other work, glue it in with silicone or similar against all walls it is touching. Do not move it for 24 hours to give the sealant time to go off.


11. The shower tray needs to be plumb level. I wouldn't worry about the floor being slightly off true but if it is fairly bad you will have to level the floor. If it is the ground floor (i.e. concrete), you can get levelling compound which is like runny mortar which will do the job. Levelling up a wooden floor can be a pain and might involve some 12mm plywood and various wedges and packers to make it level. A little work here and you won't suffer from water pooling in the tray and smelling after a few days! Make sure the tray is fully supported as per the instructions. You do not want your tray cracking from movements it is not supposed to make


12. Depending on the flooring, you might want to put the toilet and sink (assuming it's floor standing) in first and worry about the floor later but if like me you are planning to use ceramic floor tiles, you will want to tile first and then plonk the things on top of the tiles. Cutting ceramic around curves is not fun. That said, you will have to cut around a curved shower tray. Before you start any tiling, lay out a row in each direction in a cross and make sure you do not have any tiles that will need to be very narrow. If you start from a wall and work to the other side, you might need strips of 25mm x 300mm which looks rubbish and is not always easy to cut either. It would be preferable to cut the tiles on both ends of the row and something more like 140mm + (rest of 300mm tiles) + 135mm. Also do not assume that your room has square corners. If you start in the corner and work outwards you might find the wall coming in slightly and you will not be able to get the tiles to line up. Again, lay them out and check before you stick anything.


13. Tile adhesive likes to crack to make sure your floor is solid and flat before laying tiles. Put down some 9 or 12mm plywood as a base to tile onto but if your boards are very uneven, you might need strips of laminate floor insulation board, which is very thin, to make the plywood stay rigid.