The scary world of bathroom fixtures - A renovators journey

Sounds like a movie title? Well picking bathroom fittings might as well be liken to dramatic movie, and here I am under the assumption that picking the tiles and paint color would see the end of my tough decisions. I was sadly mistaken, and any who has gone through a bathroom renovation would more than likely agree. Enter, the brave new world of bathroom fixtures.

The styles, features, finishes, brands was utterly breathe taking. There was at least 50 different types of round shower heads... AMAZING.

All our bathroom supplies came from Tile Importer in Oakleigh south. They are extremely well priced but see Caleb for the best deals.

Products was a mixture of Belavista and ECT.


Our Picks.
Bathroom rain shower head 230mm

Hand held shower

Bathroom mixer with diverter valve

Tap ware for vanity

Basin for vanity

Toilet

Shower Screen 2000 x 1200 x 10 - We also purchase a screen channel for added stability.



Be Savy - Always shop around for trades - Bargin: $4700 to replace floors, fix, sand and 3 coats high gloss finish....

Part of my flooring in my house has no hardwood floors, instead MDF flooring exist - this has to go. So in this area, my Tassie oak floors need to be purchased and relayed.

I employed a group call LJ flooring - I will provide you details of their services at the end of the renovation blog, so stay tuned.

They are a Korean bunch, and on inspection of works done for their past clients I was impressed, and even more impressed with their price.

Their English is limited, so slowly communicating and repeating your point is a must. I also tend to confirm with a text msg as well.

We had variety of flooring quotes, and like our building quotes ranged DRAMATICALLY. From 5k to 12k.

Why we went with this bunch is because they are physically removing the MDF and re-levelling the flooring line with spacers before fitting on the new flooring. This is extremely important for a perfect levelled finish. It means a lot more work for the flooring guy, but you will get a perfect job at the end.

Most of the other flooring guys will just relay the new flooring on top of the old, and they will spin countless stories to tell why this is the best way, but this is certainly not the case. Because in my case, I am sanding and repolishing the existing timber flooring (and not relaying floors to the entire house), so it is absolutely crucial to repair and replace this area so it is perfectly level with the rest of the house. If you simply relay the flooring you will have a 18-20mm rise. To a lot of lazy flooring quacks, they will feed you rubbished to make their lives easier and to earn a quick buck from you.

Anyways, I am hoping that this will work out well, and that I will be able to recommend their services to others.

TIP: I am actually doing my flooring in two stages. Getting the required flooring areas fixed and replace first, then the flooring guy will come back with everything is completed to sand and finish. I am doing this so that the kitchen cabinetry can go in with the correct flooring level and that the tiling edging trim can be installed without distribution and flooring dowel can also be installed. Flooring finish should always be the last trade to be completed.

OLD MDF flooring removed....

New Tassie Oak Timber (108mm) purchased and ready for install....

A dramatic change: The weird kitchen layout with two openings has finally been resolved & kitchen area has been enlarged

Carpentry work has now been completed and the 2 weird openings to the old small kitchens have now been sealed to allow us make much better use of the kitchen space.

To increase the size of the kitchen we also sealed up part of the large opening into the kitchen. Some might say reducing a large entrance into your kitchen and family area is blasphemy, but I wanted to dramatically enlarge our kitchen space, as I love entertaining and kitchen space, both in terms of bench space and cabinetry is extremely important to me.


TIP: In reducing the width of our entrance space from 2 meters to 1.1 metres, I intentionally increased in height of entrance to compensate the narrowing of the entrance. This will (in theory) visually compensate for the reduction of the entrance way.

TIP: To further extend the visual aesthetics, I have requested the removal and squaring off of all the edging, entrance trims, and cornices to transform the kitchen area into a clean and modern area.

 

 

 

 

 

Final sanding to flatten will occur tomorrow.

Second Problem - Bowing in/on the stud openings.

The second part of our house has renovated in 1980's according to council plans.

There is s 2m plus opening created as part of the old renovation.

This is where the issue/problem arose from, the point in which the opening was cut out was carrying a large roof trust load and over the years has caused the wall stud to bow. As there was basically too much load on this one point.

Damco's builders recommended the solution  to which would fix this issue, by adding of a new beam to spread the load across the beam onto studs, and ultimately to the stumps. Of course this costed us additional $$$$'s. The spending breaking down will be included at the end of this blog, when the renovation has been completed. Stray tuned.

 

As this could potentially a structure issue, I went with Damco's recommendation and agreed to fixing the issue without hesitation.

I am just glad we discovered the problem now and not later.

Demolition - Out goes the old.... Seeing the potential for change

Demolition has now been fully completed.

Once there was a shabby kitchen, now there is just a clean space ready for the electrical and plumbing trades.

Our hideous 1950's bathroom is now gone, plumbing is in and GPOs are also installed. We are going for a rain shower as well as a hand held shower. Shower will be tiled in (walk in shower) so we will need do some additional carpentry on the floor to allow for the shower insert.

HUGE TIP: we are using flick mixers, the mixer cartridge needs to installed in the wall and correct plumbing to fit needs to be installed, prior to plastering. This is also an important consideration if any of your bath and vanity taps are in-wall.

Laundry has been demolished and plumbing resupplied to the correct areas. All old pipes have been capped off. You will need a licenced plumber to do this.

The window in our master bedroom has been removed, and the existing "kitchen sink in bedroom" has been removed with all plumbing works capped off. A walking wardrobe will be added to this space at a later stage.

 

 

Tiles aint Tiles: Bathroom, kitchen and laundry tiles are now sorted.

We have now secured and orders our tiles for the ensuite bathroom, kitchen and laundry.

What a mammoth task, what a mammoth tile selection.

We bought our tiles from Beaumont Tiles in Box Hill. We found them to be the cheapest Beaumont tile retailer and the closest.

Bathroom floor tiles chosen was porcelain "Alaska Charcoal" 600 x 300 @ $34 m2

Bathroom wall tiles chosen was porcelain "Aeon White Rect Structured" 600 x 300 @ $25 m2

Bathroom wall feature chosen was "Graphite Colour Brushed Metallic Strip 300x300mm Mosaic" at an amazing $15 per 300 x 300 sheet. The was sourced from Sydney - Tile Factory Outlet. Why? because Beaumont Tiles wanted to charge us a whopping $60 per 300 x 300 sheet. We found a very similar item at Tile Factory Outlet for $15 per 300 x 300 sheet. We required 600 wide feature and as we were tiling floor to ceiling we need at least 20 sheets at Beaumont this would have costed a whopping $1200 bucks!!! instead we paid $300 bucks!!!

 

*** TIP: the main tiles we source locally in Melbourne, however, the feautres we bought over the internet, as it was small component to risk ***


Kitchen and Laundry floor tiles chosen was porcelain "Gastone Carrera White Semi Gloss" 450 x 450 @ $32 m2 - slight marble effect, should look pretty good next to the high gloss cabinetry.

First Hiccup - RE: The Contracts...

Well we have officially hit our first snag last week with Damco Kitchens.

We signed our draft contracts and paid our deposits, however, we then added a variations, in which we were happy to pay for as an extra.

These variations was what caused us all the hassles. The overall draft invoice we signed included variation cost (including GST). When the final contracts were created and invoiced for our review, what Damco did was they removed all the variation components out of the original invoice, and recreated a new separate variation invoice. Which we were happy about as it offered clarity, however, their accounting during the process of separation was not accurate.

The main issues I found that required rectification was:

• The original variation which total $7900 was discount to $6000 (not including GST) and agree upon to secure my business. Then this was added to the overall invoice and GST applied, which equated to a total variation cost of $6600 including GST.
• When this invoice was separated out of the original contract, the GST was not appropriated accounted for, and as a result when we made amendments to this variation, effectively a doubling of the GST was applied.
• The confusion was worsened when we removed the costing for a bath (cost of tiling, carpentry, wet proofing etc) as it was too big to fit in our ensuite, and replaced it/substituted it for a walk in shower.
• When Damco account the substitution for the bath/shower, the removed the credit us the amount post GST and the charged us the amount of the shower with full GST cost. In other words the double dipped.

**** BIG LESSON: always review and double check your contracts. Go through things with a fine tooth comb, and always ask for clarifications/alterations/acceptance in writing with a date and signature. ****

After a few emails it was finally rectified to the correct state and costing for the build was finalised. Bringing the Damco build to a total of (TBA at the end of the Build). This include supply and labour of Kitchen, Laundry, and bathroom. I think this was a good price, when compared to the other quotes we had received.

I will be posting at the end of the build the full listing of cost incurred during the renovation.

At Damco we are now primarily dealing with Nikhol (Designer/ Final contracts person) and Szabi (Project Manager). At this stage I am impressed with both Nik and Szabi, and they have been to this day very responsive to all my concerns and needs. Szabi who is managing the build seems to be very experienced, having a background in carpentry. In a nutshell they are great guys to deal with and very professional.

What color paint? There are whites and there are WHITES

When to choosing the colour to put on your walls you will find that it will be on of the hardest decisions that you will have to make.

Bunnings in Box Hill was our ritual every weekend. And after picking our base colour scheme we went through about 9 colour samples pots before settling on our final choice.

Our base colour was grey walls and white trims and ceiling.

After trying a multitude of different greys, we settle on tranquil retreat (1/4 strength), vivid white for the trims, and Brilliant White for the ceilings (A special dulux product). We chose to go with Dulux.

Paint Types used - We chose to go with the Dulux range.

For the walls we used low sheen "Wash n Wear" as this was on sale at Bunnings for $69 for a 6 litre tin (bonus 2 litres).

For ceilings we used a much more expensive ceiling white paint called "Light & Space" in brilliant white. It has some titanium pigments in the paint to make their whites brighter. Coverage of this paint is not very good, we used a spray machine for the ceiling, however found that the rollover was much better to use. We had to cover very old of pink ceilings so 3 coats was required, and a brown ceiling which required 4 coats. Under sunlight the room is very bright and would definitely use the paint again.

For the trims we used high gloss "Aquaenamel" paint. The reason I chose a water based paint, was because I was going for a vivid white finish and I did not want the white is yellow over time like it would with the oil based paint. The finished is not as good a oil based. And I have to do a light sand after each coat to get a smooth "brush stroke free" finish. I would use this paint again as well as it was a lot glossier that I expected, about 80% gloss of oil base high gloss. so really its in between a semi gloss and high gloss oil based paint. The only down point of the paint it that I had to sand in between coats of get a smooth finish.

For all the prep work, we used the Dulux 1 Step. Tip here is to mix your colors into prep paint for a much better coverage and finish when you put on you top coats.

Below pic is one of a room with all completed paint work except for the window trims which only the prep coats is on. I had to do 2 prep coats as the old oil based trims are dark pink.