Full bathroom reno in Glenelg; for only $16,000!

Full bathroom reno in Glenelg; for only $16,000 our clients had their complete bathroom in two weeks!

Having just finished a beautiful bathroom at Mile End, we move straight onto the Glenelg job. This investor’s home unit at Glenelg North needs to be rented out asap; every day it is vacant it costs the owner $$$$.

Call in the experts from Quality Budget Bathroom Renovations who will guarantee a start and a finish date – on time and on budget.

 

The place is vacant which is handy for us – no furniture to cover up and no doors to tape up to keep the dust out.

We put plastic over the carpet and get started. The new tiles have been ordered and the taps, toilet, vanity and hooks and rails are being delivered on day 1.

Having all of the fixtures and fittings on site at the start of the job is the best approach, as the plumber and tiler know exactly what they are working with from the start.

The owner wants to do away with the shower over the bath (he wants to get rid of the bath altogether!) with the overall result being to increase the shower space.

The concept here is to appeal to a young professional couple with no kids – just the demographic he wants to rent this place; people who will look after, enjoy and appreciate the new bathroom, new kitchen and the new polished floorboards that he’s installing in before he puts it up for rent again.

After these improvements are done our client could expect to rent this for an extra $80 per week.

We have just completed another spectacular Budget bathroom at Morphett Vale and our man has just arrived to start ‘gutting’ this bathroom; it’s time to start the demolition.

Bath out. Toilet and basin out… And the tiles are jack-hammered off the wall. Of course we always wear the correct protection – ear-muffs and protective safety glasses. Our Demolition man has got a day to remove the fixtures and fittings, the wall tiles, the floor tiles and cement screed. It will be a long day but he’s a professional and has done it all before! Every day costs money for the client.

The plumber is booked in for tomorrow so the demo man has to stay and complete the job until the bathroom is fully ‘stripped’; efficiency and sticking to a tight time-frame is key to Budget’s success.

But today we encounter our first unforseen problem.

We often come across situations that we do not expect, and this one has thrown us a real curved ball!

There is no concrete under the bath – it’s only bare dirt! We were expecting to find the bath waste coming out of a concrete base. We would then turn it into a shower trap – simple.

In this instance we have had to prep the shower trap as expected, then white ant treat and moisture barrier the area under the old bath and pour concrete to form a stable shower base for the new cement screed.

It’s time to start putting things back in and the plumber arrives, as expected, first thing in the morning to do all of the copper work and the new shower waste.

We think that seeing the tap that fills the toilet cistern is pretty ugly so we change it to a top water entry so that the tap now fits perfectly in the recess in the back of the cistern – unseen.

The existing hot/cold inlet points for the basin are in the right position, so we don’t need to change anything there. We then remove the old bath hot / cold inlets and bath spout.

We then change the old shower hot / cold to a mixer and also renew the shower outlet. We position the mixer close to the new shower screen door so you don’t have to go too far into the shower to get the water going and so you don’t get cold water on you – it’s all about functionality planning when remodeling a bathroom.

After the walls are patched it is now time for waterproofing. Waterproofing is a very important part of the bathroom renovation. We waterproof the shower area and the entire floor area. We use a quick drying product so we can get back on it in a couple of hours to apply a second coat over the whole area again. This is then left to dry overnight to make sure that it is fully dry before tiling. We are very diligent with the waterproofing and this bathroom will never leak into the room next door.

A good idea is to do the painting at this stage of the project. There are no tiles in the room yet, so that means no cutting in and no drop sheets! There’s no vanity or shower to climb over so painting the cornice and painting in the corners is easy. We always use Solver semi gloss Maxi Wash. It is water base and is easy to apply. It is also mold and fungus resistant which helps if someone continually forgets to put the ceiling fan on when showering.

The owner is an electrician so he comes in over the weekend and installs a new double power point over the vanity, and also installs an IXL Tastic heat/light/fan unit in the ceiling.

And now for the exciting part – the tiling begins. The client has selected large format gloss white tiles, a good choice because white doesn’t date, and always look bright and fresh. We like to keep the tile joints thin so we don’t use the normal tile crosses, but use a wedge to give us the smallest gap possible for the grout to go into.

Always put white grout in white wall tiles – it looks the best and is not that hard to maintain because with the large wall tiles there are less grout joint. We’re moving towards the end of the job, and the client is happy that we are on schedule to finish on the agreed finish date.

The plumber comes back to second fix, and spends half a day on this part of the job. He installs the shower mixer tap and shower outlet. The toilet top inlet was measured perfectly during first fix, and the toilet suite slips in. With it’s back to the wall design and the closed coupled cistern sitting tight on the pan – it not only looks good but it is so easy to clean around. To top it off, it has a soft close toilet seat, so there are no excused for not putting the lid down!

The vanity and basin mixer are installed, as well as a double towel rail; it’s all starting to come together!

Another beautifully renovated bathroom by Quality Budget Bathroom Renovations, on time and on budget again. Completed in 10 working days and for exactly the quoted amount – $11600 – no nasty extras.

The shower screen and mirror have been measured – they can’t be measured until the tiling is completed – and will be installed in a couple of days.

Happy days! And another happy client!

We are now off to our next bathroom renovation at Somerton Park, and ready for whatever surprises the job has in store!