Bathroom Renovation | Port Talbot | Handyman Near Me

The finished bathroom

Although this bathroom looks quite plain, there was a tremendous amount of work invloved to get it to this stage.

Port Talbot Bathroom

I recently saw a post from a private landlord looking for someone to refit a bathroom in a house they rented out after the tenant had ... vacated, we'll say. The fact that that there was a mountain of drug growing equipment left behind was nothing to do with it.

The bathroom was shabby, and hadn't been touched for many a year, and of course the tenant hadn't really been that bothered about adding the homely touches, or even keeping it in nice condition.

The landlord wanted a complete refit.

Clearing Out

As you'll see from the pictures, it wasn't in great shape, and when I started tearing it out, the problems just started revealing themselves - tiles on tiles, stuck to wallpaper, which in turn was 'stuck' to crumbling walls and plaster.

One wall had been covered in the plastic sheeting with a marblised design, and as soon as I removed that, it posed another lot of problems.

And then there was the plastering around the window ...

Removing the tiles around the window left a huge hole to fill

Boarding the Walls for Tiling

Because the walls were in such bad shape, the landlord either needed to completely replaster the walls, or we could take the easier option to board the room out in 9mm OSB, seal the OSB and tile on to that.

This is what we did.

While boarding the walls gave us a reasonable base to work to, it still wasn't ideal - I'd say that the walls were "flat-ish", meaning that the tiles would need some manipulation to get them looking half-decent.

I managed to get the tiling all sorted, and then started fitting the suite. Given that it's a rental house, I wanted to make sure that it looked good, but was also very sturdy and functional. I built a solid wooden frame for the bath to sit on, which meant that it's very unlikely to move or cause a problem in the future, and picked a suite that I knew to be hard-wearing and fixes well (the sink uses 12mm stud bolts to attach it to the wall).

The whole job was finished with a custom tongue & groove bath panel, and bathroom grade laminate flooring.

Plumbing in Port Talbot

I tried to reuse as much of the original pipework as possible, but the bathroom radiator needed re-piping and new radiator valves, I also needed to repair a pipe damaged by another workman, and partially build a new boiler cupboard.

If you're thinking of having any work done in your home, why not give me a call or send me a text, and I'll be happy to give you my thoughts, without any obligation.