Bathroom renovation without breaking anything out

Not every bathroom you are sick of has to come out. There is a whole category of work where you only touch what you can see: tiles, grout, sealant, taps, shower screen and unit. That saves you the skip, the mess and the money. There is also a category where that same work is a bad idea, and the difference sits under the tiles, where you cannot look. Below is what can be done without a sledgehammer, where the limit lies, and why half a job on a bathroom is usually the dearest thing you can do.

What can be done with the tiling left closed

Tiling over the old tiles

New tiles on the existing layer change the most for the least breaking out. The condition is hard: the bottom layer has to be rock solid. Tap the tiles all over and listen. A hollow sound means that tile is coming away, and everything you stick on top of it comes off with it later.

The second condition is room. The build-up gets thicker, and you meet that thickness again at the door, the threshold, the height of the shower tray and at the pipe outlets, which end up sitting deeper in the wall than the tap is long. All solvable, but beforehand and not on the day itself.

Painting over the tiles

Tile paint is the cheapest thing you can do and the most overrated. By the basin or in a toilet it holds up fine. In the shower corner it does not, because there the finish stands under water every day and moves with hot and cold, and that is exactly where paint lets go. You paint the grout lines along with it, so the relief stays visible. Freshening up, not a renovation.

Renewing the grout

Grout is a filler, not a seal. The waterproof work sits underneath it. Grout that discolours or goes powdery you rake out and fill again. One signal you have to take seriously: if the grout keeps falling out in the same spot, the tile under it is moving or water is coming from somewhere it should not. Regrouting covers that over without solving it.

Replacing the sealant

Sealant in the corners and along the shower tray is deliberately flexible, because that is where the structure moves. That makes it a wearing part. When sealant goes black, the mould is usually in the sealant rather than on it, and cleaning is time you will not get back. Cut it out, let the surface underneath get properly dry, and seal it again. Do that in good time and it stays a small job. Put it off and you give water the chance to get behind the tiling.

Swapping sanitary ware without opening up the wall

Taps, shower set, basin, toilet and unit can come out and go back in, as long as the connections stay where they are. With a wall-hung toilet the frame stays in the wall and you only swap the pan and the flush plate. Watch the fixing centres: if a new pan does not fit the existing bolts, new holes go in the tile and the old ones stay visible. Where it does turn into breaking out is going from a surface-mounted tap to a concealed one. That one disappears into the wall, so the wall opens up.

Changing a shower enclosure or screen

The old enclosure out and a clean glass panel in its place changes the look more than any other single job. The new screen does have to fit the existing shower tray or the existing fall, and the fixing holes end up visible in the tiling.

If you want to go from a raised shower tray to a level-access walk-in shower, that falls outside this list. That needs fall in the floor, and you make that in the substrate. Then the floor opens up after all and you are into a full bathroom renovation.

When it cannot be done

This is the most important paragraph in this article, because this is where the money goes.

Three situations where doing it up is the wrong call. Tiling that sounds hollow: the substrate is already letting go and you are building on something that moves. Damp: discolouring along the sealant, a soft skirting board or door frame, a stain on the ceiling of the room below, a smell that comes back after you air the place. Water sitting behind the tiles does not go away because you put a layer over it, it just goes underground. And the layout: as soon as the toilet or the shower moves, the waste has to move with it, and a waste needs fall. You make that fall in the floor, not in the tile adhesive.

And there is a reason you cannot see. In older bathrooms there is often no real waterproof layer under the tiling, only adhesive and the hope that the grout does its job. Do such a bathroom up and you renew the layer you can see while leaving the layer that does the work untouched. That bathroom then looks better than it is.

Why half a job costs you more later

Doing it up saves on the items that come with demolition: breaking out, taking the rubble away, new pipework, and the days you cannot use the bathroom. It saves nothing on the waterproofing, because you do not touch that. So the question is not what doing it up saves, but whether the layer that stays put has years left in it. If it has, this is sensible work. If it has not, what you are buying is a postponement.

And that postponement is expensive, for three reasons. You pay twice for the same square metre, and the second time more than the first, because two layers of tiling then have to come out instead of one. You lose the early signals: a damp problem hiding under a fresh layer only shows itself once it is on the ceiling downstairs, and by then you are not in a bathroom job any more but in a ceiling as well, and sometimes in a floor. And you start the next job on the back foot, because the floor is higher, the door has been planed down and the shower tray is built into a raised section that was never meant to be there.

So the first thing I ask is this: do you want to keep this bathroom working the way it does, or do you want to change something about the layout in a while after all. In the first case, doing it up is the smartest choice there is. In the second, it is money thrown away, however tempting the quote looks.

How I judge that before anything happens

Looking, tapping, smelling, and having a look at the ceiling of the room below. If I am in any doubt I take one tile off to see what is behind it: a small hole against a big assumption. After that I tell you whether this is a bathroom you can do up, or one where that would be a waste of your money. Before the work starts, not halfway through.

If it is a do-up, most of it falls under odd jobs and maintenance and I plan it back to back, so your bathroom does not sit half finished. If new tiles go over the top, the same holds as for tiling and flooring in the rest of the house: a flat substrate is half the work. If the bathroom runs along with a bigger job, I combine it with renovating that whole floor.

What happens under the tiles on a full job, from fall to waterproofing, is set out on bathrooms and sanitary ware. Both versions side by side, completely new and only retiled, you can see in the work I have finished.