Robert's Home Renovation: Over the Hump

The worst of the project is behind us.

Paul worked Saturday and Sunday to complete the lining of the internal walls and ceiling of the bathroom. He used "villaboard" cement sheeting for the walls and gyprock for the ceiling. Villaboard is tough water tolerating cement sheeting which is ideal for damp bathroom environments. Gyprock is used in the ceiling because it is lighter material. The shower walls will be specially waterproofed as required by law, and I will ensure that I lay a coat of sealer on the gyprock and the non-tiled sections of the walls before I paint them. Paul also lined the window frame at the shower, the shower recess for shampoo, soap,etc with villaboard for tiling.

Paul brazing a plumbing joint

Wall section ready for panel, held by glue and nails

With that phase completed Paul will be out of the picture for a few days and Brad and his helper Christian will step in to do their screeding and tile work.

The next day (yesterday, Monday) Paul put in a full day working elsewhere and at 2AM this morning set off in a truck for Geraldton 300 miles to the north of Perth for two days of work. It's a tough schedule but he is philosophical about it, accepting that there are times like this when the work pours in and he has to get through it. I expect him back on site on Friday after the bathroom floor has been tiled so that he can put the new toilet in position and measure exactly where its plumbing will come out of the wall.

I did what I could to help, wheezing and coughing my way through a very bad cold which had me on antibiotics. I did some pretty good work on Saturday morning to convert the room from two overhead lights and two fans to one of each. I was confronted with a maze of cabling that seemed to go everywhere. There was a cable supplying the first light socket with power from the house's single light circuit. From that first light socket power was sent to the first fan as well as the second light socket. The second light socket then sent power to the toilet fan as well as the patio floodlight. Then there were the switch cables to sort out.

Toilet light removed and joiner box in pace

Paul fitting panel and cable joiners above door

Cleaning the floors in preparation for the tiling work took hours. Mud had been tracked onto the floors from the outside, and there was a lot of mud in the corner of the bathroom where we had dug under the external wall to alter the plumbing. I figured that the mud would impede the adhesion of the screed cement to the original floor and it had to be removed. After sweeping on my hands and knees the vacuum cleaning I went in with water, a brush, and a sponge to wash the floors as best I could.

This morning Christian arrived to begin work on the floor: first putting in more pins to encourage the sections of underlying concrete to stay together, then cementing in the hob, a single brick barrier between the shower and the rest of the room. The hob is necessary in order to ensure a proper floor slope directing all shower water into the channel drain.