Renovating a bathroom can be fraught with perils and is one of the few rooms of the home where getting a professional in can make a world of difference to the quality, cost, time, and stress involved in your renovation.
Home renovation shows make bathroom DIY look fascinating and kind of fun…but are all their ideas actually GOOD?
Whether a job is fiddly or downright dangerous, here’s our list of tasks you’re far better off employing a professional to do so that you can enjoy your new bathroom for years to come.
Unprofessional Planning
Seriously, some of the best fun when renovating or building is sketching out the plans of your dream room or house. But are your plans good enough and will skimping on drafting fees really save money in the long run?
The simple answer is No.
Sydney-based company RenovatePlans strongly advise against skimping on this step of a renovation.
- If something goes wrong because of your plans, be prepared for expensive law suits!
- With professional plans, you can avoid messy Council incidents that can result in costly fines, corrections or even demolitions!
- A draftsman knows their stuff and can provide you with design options to suit your budget and requirements.
- Draftsmen know about the new innovations, providing you with so many more options!
And you can still draw up your own dream bathroom plan – providing this as a starting point for a draftsman can save time and reduce their fees.
Waterproofing
Jump onto Google or YouTube and search for bathroom waterproofing – you’ll be bombarded by DIY tutorials and checklists.
How hard could it be? Clean the floor, apply primer, apply silicone, add waterproofing agent, add membrane, more agent…wait, how many steps is that? Did I miss something? And we don’t even have tiles up yet!
You just poured your savings into the bathroom of your dreams and shonky waterproofing could undo the whole lot.
The Green Building Show presents some great points about how waterproofing isn’t a simple one-fits-all task.
A professional can assess exactly what foundation work and waterproofing best suits your bathroom, meaning not having to spend twice as much down the track to fix tiling and serious structural damage.
All that aside, is it legal? Waterproofing is one of the most common defects in the building industry and must be carried out by a trained, licensed professional. You’re best off checking first!
Electrical Work
Really, this one goes without saying. Aside from being incredibly illegal in Australia, electricity is just a ridiculously dangerous thing for an untrained person to play with!
Let’s PRETEND that it is legal and just think for a second about electricity… in a bathroom… full of water…
There is no way that unskilled electrical work in a bathroom can end well for you or your family.
Major Plumbing
There’s a bit more to plumbing than connecting a bunch of pipes and turning on a tap. The potential for things to go wrong can be dangerous and costly.
Believe it or not, some plumbing jobs are illegal!
So sewage… be honest, you don’t even WANT to touch that stuff. Well, lucky for you it’s illegal anyway!
The moral of the story when it comes to renovating a bathroom is – hire a plumber if it’s dangerous, hire a plumber if it’s a difficult job to save you time, stress and hire a plumber so you don’t have to spend money on repairing an unprofessional plumbing job.
Joe Rantino is the Owner of Gladesville Plumbing Services in Sydney, an experienced team of plumbers specialising in both corporate and residential plumbing.
