Why You Need A Professional To Refurbish Your Bathroom
In terms of refurbishment, the two most challenging rooms in the home are the kitchen and the bathroom. When money’s tight and work needs doing at home, it’s tempting to take on DIY projects by yourself - even the really complex stuff.
The truth is that bathroom refurbishment is rarely a job for the enthusiastic amateur, and bathrooms or kitchens present a particularly steep challenge. In this article, we’ll take a quick look at some perils of DIY bathroom refurbishment projects.
Tiling a Bathroom Is Harder Than You Think
Most bathrooms will include an element of tiling, and the bathroom’s much trickier than the kitchen because of the massive potential for damp. Additionally, if your walls aren’t perfectly straight, getting your tiles to look good is surprisingly difficult, and poor tiling can knock money off the value of your house, regardless of whether it leaks in the long term.
Spilled grout can also spoil a newly laid floor, so if you’re not confident that you can keep the room tidy, ask someone to help you clean up the mess quickly.
Safe Electrics In a Bathroom
Bathrooms feature a deadly mix of electricity and water, so you really need to know what you’re doing before attempting to wire anything in. The shower, shaver outlet, extractor fan and heaters will all need to be professionally installed and checked for safety. Lighting needs to be installed in such a way that they’re completely out of reach (or, ideally, flush into the ceiling). Modern showers may force a major upgrade to the fuse box, and that’s definitely not a job for an amateur sparky; even putting spotlights over the bath could be risky as a DIY project.
If you do significant work in the bathroom, such as a full bathroom refurbishment, you might need to have your local council’s building regulations department come and inspect the work to make sure you’ve done a good job. If you hire a bathroom refurbishment company, they’ll do all the certification for you. If you haven’t and your work is sloppy, you’ll run into problems when it’s time to sell up and move on.
Heating Your Bathroom Safely
Regardless of whether you have central heating in a bathroom, you might want to add another type of heating such as underfloor heating or a towel rail. Again, electrical safety is paramount, and you should never place control panels anywhere that water could get in. You also can’t do a botch job and give up half way, since your controls must be permanently wall mounted to be safe. There are strict rules about this, so you’ll need to consult a professional bathroom refurbisher to get the lowdown on what’s possible in your home.
Know When It’s Time to Ask For Help
DIY is a risky business. If you do a bad job, the best case scenario is that it could cost a lot of money to put right, either straight away or years down the line when faults start to develop. The worst case scenario is that you injure yourself or someone else accidentally.
We always recommend that professionals take on complex bathroom refurbishment projects, and HC Refurbishments are so affordable, it’s silly to take the risk of DIY.
22 October 2013
