Converting a bedroom into a bathroom

[overlander matt]

Our house has never had a proper 'family' bathroom. The ground and first floor each had a small toilet and in a separate part of the building there was a room with a bath, shower and wash basin (but no WC). Probably the lack of suitable drainage for solid waste deterred any previous owners from creating a bathroom with all the standard bathroom options. The time has come to convert a bedroom into a family bathroom. The drainage has been installed externally but I now need to consider how to fit out a bathroom in an older building.

We have both unplastered brick and lime plastered walls that I plan to tile to some extent - untiled areas will be painted. I was considering the use of cement backer boards for the tiled areas and a lime plaster on areas to be painted. Tiled walls obviously won't be breathable so is there any negative to using the backer boards? A nice flat surface will make the tiling simpler. I'm also concerned about fixing heavy tiles to an old plastered wall.

I'm tempted to use an insulated lime plaster to cover the inside of the external brick walls that will be painted to help reduced condensation.

Any suggestions about the change of use for a room would be much appreciated.

Matt

 

[listed]

Hi Matt. I am sure you have thought about this but just in case you have not, is your property listed and if so have you got consent for this first? I only ask this as this is something we are looking to do and we have applied for consent in advance for all external and new internal pipework affecting the fabric as we would be altering the fabric of the building doing this and also repurposing a room of the property and are waiting for a response. We are hopeful for permission for this but there is no guarantee.

 

[Allison]

We have been advise by our lime man not to tile inside external walls which will be covered with insulated lime plaster but to put our shower/bath and sink on deviding walls that are of modern construction or plastered brick. This way the wall doesn't have to breath and the inside of the external
walls remain breathable. It will work for us.

 

[overlander matt]

Thanks for the replies. I have approval from the CO for the bathroom conversions - there will be 3 bathrooms going in to the house in time. There was not too much interest from the CO in the pipe runs other than keeping the new soil pipes internal and minimising new holes for vents. I think as the overall project has resulted in a net reduction of external openings - existing ones have been repaired or repurposed - and only a couple of new ones created this may have helped.

As for the plastering and tiling on the external walls, I suspect that I won't be able to avoid it completely... Is there really much difference between a wall with a thick covering of shiny vinyl paint and a cement board with tiles? It's been a common problem throughout the house - pretty much all of the lime plastered walls have been covered with an inappropriate paint, gypsum, plasterboard or artex. On the ground floor I have had to go back to brickwork and start again in lime where there were signs of damp but elsewhere, where the walls were dry I have removed what I could of the offending wall coverings and skimmed with lime. Externally, the brickwork has had much of the cement pointing removed and replaced with lime. In summary, the building has probably not been this breathable for more than 50 years!

Is there a preferred way to tile the inside of an external wall? Starting from bare brick I was looking at using a backerboard screwed to the wall to provide a flat surface for tiling.

 

[a twig]

At our place I battened and then boarded, thus leaving a dry void behind board to allow wall to breathe.