The Toilet

The toilet was our first major exploration into renovation, or rather trying to put a room back together rather than ripping it all out, or just painting. Oh boy was this room a major trial! We ripped out the asbestos walling, took off the lovely 70's tiles, and found the screed underneath was too high for what we wanted... so then ensured hours of my partner chipping away at the screed to get it lower.

Here you can see the toilet before in it's full glory:

 Here is after the walls have been ripped out, screed chipped away and new screed laid.

We had to re-screed a couple of times to get it level, even though it was self-leveling screed.We realised during this process that we would have to let the screed dry for approximately 3 days before we could waterproof the floor, so we extended the portable toilet for another week, and finished gyprocking this room.

When this was dry, we laid the waterproof, waited for that to dry for another day, and got to laying my beautiful big grey tiles (500x500 that I bought on sale from Beaumont Tiles)!

Now here is a tip for everyone, the big tiles look great, but they are harder to lay, your floor needs to be perfectly level so they don't crack. Even after laying screed a few times we found we still were not perfectly level... believe me it was a pain in the arse!

We learned how to tile online watching tutorials, then went out and bought a wet saw and got started tiling. Once the tiling was done, and grouted we got to installing the toilet. We bought a new toilet cheaply from Evans & Clarke Auctioneers for approximately $120 with a soft closing seat, which after looking around, was extremely cheap for what it was. However, when we went to install it, we realised our flange was not set a normal distance from the wall, and our toilet sat about 8 inches away from the wall with no support for the cistern.

Rookie mistake... so guys, make sure you measure the distance so that you don't have to buy a second toilet. Our second toilet we also bought from Evans & Clarke for less than $200, which is a soft closing close coupling system. This means there is no bolts showing, and the water pipes are hidden.

Unfortunately this also means it is extremely hard to install. My partner was in the process of installing the toilet, when the guys who delivered our portable toilet: All Area Portables came to pick it up, but could not as it had not been pumped. While he was here, he asked to look at our toilet, it turns out they are actually a bathroom renovation business who have portable hire to supplement their business. He took one look at our toilet and told us we were doing it all wrong, using the wrong flange to change the P trap (wall connection) toilet we bought into a S trap (floor connection), and gave us the correct flange for free with a few tips. After many days and complete frustration of my partner he could not push our toilet all the way up to the wall and finish installing as the water connection was in the wrong position on the wall. I called the plumber that had delivered our portable toilet and helped us our jamb (he was coming to pick up the portable toilet again that day) and asked if he could help us out. He said he could, and he would only charge us $20 to move the pipe. He came around, cut a hole in the wall, moved the pipe across, fixed up the flange (we still had it wrong) and installed the toilet for us.... all for $20 (and in the end he did not even want to take the $20, but do it for free). So I would definitely recommend Michael and Jason Kelly from All Area Bathrooms, they helped us out in a jam when they did not have to.

Thanks to them and the wonderful work from my partner (and myself) we have a toilet! Here it is

I still have a bit of work to do in the toilet, I have to prime and paint the walls and ceiling... sand, prime, paint and re-frame the window, and replace the tile on either side of the toilet (we had to pull it off to fit the toilet directly against the wall). So I will come back and show you the finished product when I get there.

15 renovation mistakes you can make

I recently found an article on the 15 biggest renovation mistakes that people can make, which gives some handy hints to new home-buyers looking to invest in a property, and are considering renovation as a way to create profit on their new home. I hadn’t read this article before we bought our house, but I know the whole thought process in what was right and wrong, and how we were willing to spend was very confusing. So hopefully this article will help someone else in their house hunting considerations.

Renovation wasn’t our main focus when we were looking at buying, ideally we wanted to buy a house we could just live in comfortably. However when looking, we found the prices for houses that met our criteria were way more than we were willing to pay, as we were very set on the amount we felt comfortable repaying fortnightly back in a loan. Therefore we started to look to houses we could renovate, and ideally end up with a house that was similar to others we were looking at for a more reasonable price. I know that there would be a lot of other people out there with this same dilemma in this current financial climate, and this article will help others consider some very important points such as suburb selection, researching your property, and considering offers before buying. Although we did not read this article before buying, we didn’t rush into buying a house. We spent a lot of time researching to understand our means; in how much we were willing to spend, our criteria for a house, and then more time researching suburbs, selling prices, and weighing the pros and cons to houses we are looking at and their immediate areas.

Another very interesting point I would like to discuss from the article is confusing fiction with reality. Renovation TV shows houses being renovated quickly, but they have trades and bundles of money handed to them. Realistically renovating is dirty and hard, but what no one tells you is how long things can take, and how much things can cost! In reality you have a limited budget, trades are astronomically expensive so you end up doing as much as you can DIY, and DIY takes a lot of time! So consider these points discussed in the article carefully before you look at buying, and especially renovating!