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How to achieve a more spacious bathroom
A hot bath with foam, relaxing, scented, a champagne next to it, and outside, beyond the windows, a fabulous winter landscape … What a beautiful dream! Unfortunately, you live in the block, and your bathtub, surrounded by three faience tiled walls, seems like a mini-jail. It is just that you put yourself under the scented foam and … stretch your legs, you hit the shower pipes. Put your head back, you hit the shelf with shampoos. To get out of the bathtub, you have to jump the stile (do it with your wet feet and you can boast with your extreme flexibility in extreme sports). The claustrophobia is ready, especially as the room is small. Do you still deserve a bathtub? And what can you do?
Easy: give up the tub and replace it with a shower cabin!
It may seem difficult at the first sight, and it is even possible to give up the idea of taking a bath, but think of the advantages that such an arrangement offers you:
– Make an important water saving (on a simple shower you consume four times less water than if you take a bath followed by the necessary shower);
– Reduce the risk of injury from getting out of the tub (for people with special locomotory problems it is the most appropriate option);
– Reduce the air humidity and the risk of spreading the water on the floor (if you do not like the enclosed spaces, choose a glass door or transparency for the cabin);
– You get a great and useful extra space where you can fit your washing machine or you can arrange it as you wish, either to provide a more spacious air to the room, or to create spaces for the bath towels, cosmetics storage etc.
– If you imagine that giving up the tub involves a Spartan way of life … we have good news: the modern showers also offer the opportunity to create even a mini-spa at home. You can choose classic installations to add steam or hydro massage installation to your liking, and you can add a chair in the cabin, thus transforming the experience of the shower into a relaxing and energy recovering experience.
Over all, if you are thinking better about bath redecoration, you have a reason to replace all the old stuff, the faulty equipment or the ones that you did not like in your old bathroom.
How to you that?
First, make a plan for the future changes:
- Evaluate the space and decide what kind of shower cabin would be suited to your needs. The shower cabins are priced from 100£ upwards and, depending on the budget, you can choose even the most sophisticated types of installations and materials.
Generally, the shower cabins can have tubs made of acrylic or glass fiber trays, with varying heights from the floor, and the walls are made up of a metal skeleton with plexiglass or glass windows. The corner cabins, semi-circles, give more space from the bathroom, while the square cabinets give more space to the person who takes a shower and they are found in the most varied sizes. You also have the opportunity to build the shower cabin directly, lifting a small pool from the floor and isolate it from the rest of the bathroom through a glass brick wall and a sliding door or a plastic curtain.
- The drainage orifice of the bathtub will also be the future one of the shower cabin; take into account the positioning of the cabin in this corner and make a sketch, on the paper, where you can predict also where exactly you will integrate the washing machine, if it is the case. Ask the specialist for installation and connection systems advice.
- Do not forget that by removing the tub, you will have to fill the faience tile and the sandstone tile on that area. Also take into account that you will probably change the shower battery, the old wall installations, etc. Plan the steps and costs of the materials and the workmanship (including at least a plumber and a helping hand for moving the bathtub, even if you rely heavily on your own efforts). This involves the following steps:
Taking down the bathtub
Free the room in advance of all the accessories and the furniture in it. Often the bath tubs are placed between three walls and built in the front. Pull down this wall, clean the cemented areas, disconnect the fittings of the installations and remove the tub. Usually, this is made of cast iron, so some people will need to move from place to place (if you go to an old iron recycling center, you get a good deal of the money invested). Attention to the size of the bathroom door, if it can not be removed to here, you will have to choose to break the tub into smaller pieces (it can be recycled). The basic tool at this stage is the sledge hammer.
The rehabilitation of the room, installation of the shower
Before completing the ceramic plating (or replacing it altogether, if it is desired), first make the necessary repairs to the installations (stopping the water on the column), pour the screed, rehabilitate the damaged walls. If you have chosen to build the tub, make sure that the floor is slightly inclined as it approaches the drain and a small wall from the floor is built to isolate it from the rest of the bath. The floor is almost finished and before the ceramic plating of the walls the shower cabin is installed (check the perimeter on which this will stand, including no electrical wires in this space, then connect the drainage orifice and fix the tub on its place, paying a particular attention to the isolation). Later on, the walls are plated, while many factors are being taken care of: the anticorrosion devices are now being installed, but also the ceramic shelves that will be placed inside the shower cabin, the rings or bars (made of chrome or stainless steel, water resistant) that you will use as towels supports or as support for people with special needs, the mirrors, etc. It is also planned now where the cabin walls will be anchored in the wall. The shower cabin is assembled at the end.
Problems to keep in mind:
- Over time, the water infiltration under the shower can occur: a good isolation of the shower from the beginning, placing it in the floor or building a direct one are solutions to avoid this problem;
- The stucking of the drain: in a purchased tub, you can leave a visitation opening.
- When you are choosing the shower cabin, be sure to close the doors tightly; during the assembling, you should also be careful at the sealing of the walls.
- Check in advance what you buy: the cabin must have no visible defects. Check its items also when you arrive home, before the assembly, to be shure that no damage has occurred during transport.
- Check the surface on which it is assembled, to be flat, so that the horizontal adjustment is as easy as possible.
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