My DIY Adventure...

[Hamzter]

Having gone temporarily insane, I decided to buy a house, I then spent the best part of 2 years doing the place up, I thought I might share my adventure with you all. I really dropped myself in the deep end here, having not done more than put up shelves previously, I then went straight into a DIY loft conversion and bathroom refit, everyone thought I was bonkers but I showed em

Anyway, on with the photos, starting with the bathroom. This room was pretty grim when I moved in...

...and got much worse when I had to pull up the floor to sort some piping...

I started off stripping everything back to the stud work and brick...

Fitted a dropped ceiling so I could fit downlighters (loft room above stopped me going straight into the ceiling)...

Fitted insulation and plaster boarded...

I also put tile board on the walls, this stuff is insulated which is good for keeping condensation off the tiles. Amusingly enough, these things are held in place with studs called 'spankers'...

New pipes finished, my soldering skills could use some work...

New plywood floor goes down...

Bath goes in...

Shower tray goes in, and cubicle tanked (it's amazing how many people forget to do this, even waterproof grout is porous, so the wall starts to degrade from the damp after a couple of years if you don't tank it)...

Tiling begins...

Shower and cubicle in...

I love these taps...

Door hung...

Underfloor heating mat laid...

Stay tuned for the concluding part...

 

[Hamzter]

...and here is the concluding part

Phew! That took about 4 months to finish, but the house took nearly 2 years to complete which might give you an idea of the scale of work I had ahead of me

Coming up later - I remove a floor, then put it back

 

[Mr.Stu]

Awesome! Other rooms please ...

 

[Duke]

That looks stunning - great work! How come you didn't put the extractor fan nearer to the shower by the way?

 

[Azza]

Nice work that. Were you living there while you did the work?

 

[£15]

Nice. Very nice. But you changed the taps!?

I want underfloor heating in my next house. Is it easy to fit and worth the effort/expense?

 

[Gilly]

4 months

With kids in the house there's no way I could take that long on a refit, though I need to do one

What did you put above the dropped ceiling to stop steam going up?

 

[SDK^]

I'm also interested in the underfloor heating.
I've been looking at the 200 watt ProWarm electric mat kits for our en-suite. They look quite easy to install up until the point where you need to decide where the thermostat goes.

Did you get a Pro elec installer in to finish it off. My understanding this is a legal requirement ?

 

[Hamzter]

That looks stunning - great work! How come you didn't put the extractor fan nearer to the shower by the way?

There was already an extractor hole there, I don't think you can have the extractor right next to the shower anyway because of electrical zones...

Nice work that. Were you living there while you did the work?

Yep! It required some careful planning to ensure I always had a working bath or shower, keeping the dirt out of the living areas is a real nightmare.

Nice. Very nice. But you changed the taps!?

I want underfloor heating in my next house. Is it easy to fit and worth the effort/expense?

I was very tempted to leave the taps, I've had more compliments on the old ones than anything else!

The underfloor heating was surprisingly cheap, about £80 for the mat + £60 for the thermostat. It needs to be bedded into a layer of self leveling compound before covering it with tiles/laminate/stuff, which is dead easy to do. It has to be on the correct base though, straight onto floorboards is no good because the self leveling compound will just go down all the gaps, there's probably solutions to that mind. Insulating underneath the floor is also a good idea, but not vital. I'd say it's definitely worth the expense in the bathroom, tiles feel freezing even in summer, but with the heating they feel great under your feet. If you're planning on doing multiple rooms, it might be worth looking into the water systems (this one was electric), it might work out cheaper in the long run.

 

[Gilly]

I'm a freak. I love having cold feet and enjoy cold tiles

 

[Hamzter]

4 months

With kids in the house there's no way I could take that long on a refit, though I need to do one

What did you put above the dropped ceiling to stop steam going up?

This was a complete strip and rebuild job, not a shred of the old bathroom is left, so this is a pretty extreme situation. I was also working full time about 60 hours a week, reckon if I took time off work I'd have it done in 3 weeks.

The only place the steam can get up there is around the downlights, they're zone 1 lights so virtually nothing will get past them and they're a tight seal to the ceiling.

I'm also interested in the underfloor heating.
I've been looking at the 200 watt ProWarm electric mat kits for our en-suite. They look quite easy to install up until the point where you need to decide where the thermostat goes.

Did you get a Pro elec installer in to finish it off. My understanding this is a legal requirement ?

I went with Devimat, I think they're all quite similar though. I got my regular sparky to wire it up, although I ran all the wires, I had trouble running wires in places where the stud work got in the way, but there are creative ways of getting round it. I've been very careful to comply to the regulations on this house, don't want anything coming back and biting me, sparky has signed off all the electrics and building control signed off the structural work I had done too. Makes sense really, I got this house at a steal because the previous owner didn't follow the rules, and he found no one was willing to buy it as a result.

 

[Gilly]

This was a complete strip and rebuild job, not a shred of the old bathroom is left, so this is a pretty extreme situation. I was also working full time about 60 hours a week, reckon if I took time off work I'd have it done in 3 weeks.

The only place the steam can get up there is around the downlights, they're zone 1 lights so virtually nothing will get past them and they're a tight seal to the ceiling.

I didn't realise that would be enough. That's good news

 

[Hamzter]

Time for some more pictures

The real big job in this house was the loft, the previous owner had converted it himself, and not to building regulations. There were a number of things that were very wrong with it - floor structure woefully unsuitable, not enough head height on the stairs, very little insulation, no fireproofing, unsuitable fire escape window etc. Basically it had to be completely stripped out and done again, I got this house very cheap because very few people were willing to do it, but I love a challenge

Here's how is was when I moved in...

Not a bad area (6m x 6m to the eaves) and a decent head height (~3m to the ridge), being an old cut roof style structure it was perfect for conversion. Modern houses are no good for this without rebuilding the roof as they use trusses now. My first job was to remove all the old carpet, wood, plasterboard etc., this took a surprisingly long time to do since everything had to be carried down 2 flights of stairs and down to the skip at the end of the garden. It all went in the end though...

Here I found my first shock, a window had been added without putting in a lintel to support the stuff above it!

This is pretty bad normally, but there's a purlin (major roof support member) right above the window, which takes about 1/8 of the weight of the roof. It's lucky it didn't collapse when he was fitting the window!

It took about 3 months of free time to finish stripping out and disposing of the old loft, then I got started with the construction. First up was fitting the Velux windows...

This was all done from inside, there's no need to risk climbing on the roof with modern Velux. About a days work per window, here's the second...

I made an potentially annoying discovery at this point - I can now see my work (about 1.5m away) from my house! It's a good thing I like where I work

 

[Hamzter]

Next job was to finish removing the old floor structure so that the new one could be put in, the previous had used 2" steel box section and angle iron instead of the usual I beam and joist arrangement, my structural engineer spec'd beams which were at least 10 times the strength of the old ones! He'd also welded it together which may it a pig to remove...

Fortunately I was wearing my asbestos pants that day! The last section of steel also supported the stairs, so it was time to remove that. I wasn't looking forward to this, because it was the only thing stopping dirt from getting to the rest of the house, but it couldn't be helped.

Now you see it...

Now you don't!

Tada!

This is the point where the builders took over, to fit the ~800kg of still required to support the new floor...

They also bricked up the old window for me, which finally made the walls structurally sound again...

And then they went on their way to leave me to the DIY once again. This is about 7-8 months into the project now, it was quite daunting to think how much more work there was to do, just gotta keep moving. The views out the window were also quite a distraction...

 

[Simon]

Seen the loft thread on another forum. Great work. Bathroom looks really good, I'm starting mine next week :/

 

[arknor]

awesome wish I had enough man-skills to do a professional looking job with a better finish than most people who do it for a living would manage.

I can just do the basic repairs and maintenance although I'm fairly good when it comes to finding out what's wrong with white goods and fixing them like it's in my DNA and I just "know"
Even as a small child I was fascinated with taking things about to see how they work and putting them back together which my parents hated

I wanted to be an electrician when I was at school but was told I couldn't be one because I'm partially colour blind but that's probably BS because I've never had any problems with wiring etc

blues/purples
yellows/greens/some shades of brown all look almost exactly the same to me but I can still tell the difference if they are the proper full colour it's just different shades can look a colour they aren't

 

[Hamzter]

The internet's a small place aint it!

Time for some more pics. With the builders gone, I got started putting in the floor joists, getting equipment into the loft was interesting without a staircase, I ended up setting up a pulley to haul the heavier stuff up.

Around this point, the ceiling in one of the bedrooms decided to give way...

Another job to add to the list. Being an old lathe and plaster job, I decided to replace it with plasterboard, so I got stomping, 5 minutes later...

This actually made things easier, it gave me more space to store materials and a safer route to enter the loft (ladders over staircases are dangerous).

Stud work then started to take shape...

I continue with the worlds largest jigsaw puzzle cutting and sealing all the insulation...

And the views continue to distract me...

 

[Hamzter]

Next up was fitting the staircase, this was a huge relief as I was climbing up and down 30 times a day (without a ladder, jumping and doing a pull up, safer than using a ladder)...

With the insulation complete, I started on the plaster boarding...

Just about done...

Boxed in and plaster boarded the staircase...

 

[Hamzter]

Valuable lesson learned here, don't forget to close your windows before you go to work! No damage luckily...

I had the sparky finish off all the electrics, and the plasterer turned up to do his stuff...

A lick of paint later...

And another sunset

 

[Mark A]

Wow, really nice work there, looks loads better than it did. It makes me wonder why anyone would pay to have this sort of work carried out when it's so much fun to do it yourself .

Did you not fancy having a go at the plastering yourself?