Category: Cloakroom

Today, we decided to complete one of the last things to do inside our Cloakroom, namely making two Oak panels for covering up two Utility Channel “holes”. We found a planed plank of Oak timber on our rack in our garden shed. We must have had some left-over pieces from a previous job couple of years ago. It was a large enough piece to fit the requirements of making a 125mm tall panel cover and long enough to cover up two holes measuring 365mm (one near the toilet) and 400mm long (near the basin). These Oak covers will overlap the holes by 12mm on the top and bottom edges and at least 25mm at the beginning and end of the covers. This will protect the edges of wallpaper all around, but the larger overlaps will allow for magnets to be stuck into the wall and the Oak, to help hold the panel in place. Our piece of Oak we pulled out of the shed was 1200mm long by 160mm wide. We first trimmed it down to 125mm using our bench circular saw and then got out our router. We used a large 19mm straight cutter to cut away the back to form the lip on the top and bottom edges first. We noticed on our test piece revealed that the cutter would “chip” off huge splinters as the cutter was travelling along the Oak and hit certain grain in the wood which ripped large chunks off. So, we changed our approached and very delicately cut a very slim 1mm groove instead of trying to do 5mm in one go. This worked much better and this allowed us to carry on cutting the rest of the wood away without causing these splinters. We then changed over to the chamfer cutter to cut a 45degrees slope on the front, to make it a softer profile. Now, we can chop this long piece into two smaller lengths, measuring 425mm and 460mm each. Next, we trimmed all four corners off and applied the chamfer again on each end. Finally, we switched back to the straight cutter to remove the back material to make the larger lip at the ends.

The last job was to fit some small magnets to both the Oak panel and into the wall surface as well. We found twenty little round ones measuring 6mm in diameter and 3mm long. We drilled a flat bottomed 6mm holes in four locations, two at each end of each panel and glued them in with superglue. Now, we put magnets on top of the ones buried in the wood so that we could mark on the wall where we would need to drill those holes. We put a blob of gel paint on the magnets and that successfully marked the wall when we carefully placed the panels back in position. We drilled the holes and at this point, we thought that the 3mm length would not be long enough to be successfully glued into the wall, so we changed over to 6mm length ones instead. We put on parcel tape on the back of the Oak panels and then put the magnets back on, put construction glue into the holes in the walls, making sure that all the dust have been removed, and finally, very carefully put back the panel on the wall, with the sticking out magnets squidging into the glue. We put a spreader clamp across to the opposite wall to help hold the panels in place while the glue sets.

Oh yes, We gave the Oak three coats of Acrylic transparent varnish to protect the surface from dirty fingers and grease.

We now have two Oak covers, ready for switches, displays, speakers, microphones, buttons and all sorts to be installed later on!

We proceeded to paint the ceiling in the Cloakroom a nice sky blue colour (to match the colours in our wallpaper), but we also wanted to create some fluffy clouds so we cut some paper and stuck them to the ceiling, to cover the air vent and the three lighting units. They are of variable size and shape.
We then decided that the clouds are not working so we painted the air vent the sky blue colour, to make it blend in more, and dab various colours of grey and white and blue to make the clouds more fluffy.

Then, we painted the alcove where the vanity unit is going, including either side of the door entrance. This is a blue grey colour that approximately matches the colours in our wallpaper.

Now we are ready to apply the final finishing top coat of resin to the floor. It is a pale grey colour. But, first, we sanded the rough surface, to reduce the obvious join lines and other bumps and rubbed around the edges. We noticed that there were holes so we filled them up with more filler.

After, we were satisfied with the condition of the floor, we proceeded to paint the final resin top coat all over.
While the resin was still wet, we sprinkled icing sugar all over the surface, to help roughen up the surface, to make it a better non-slip surface.

After a day of waiting for the resin to fully cure, we then got a bucket of hot water and poured it all over the floor. Because we deliberately had a small slope rising towards the doorway, none of the water escaped the room at all. We used a sponge to stir the water, to dissolve the sugar and then picked up the dirty water with a couple of sponges. We repeated again with more hot fresh water and sponged it dry. We now have one finished flooring, fully waterproof and easy to clean right around the whole room, including underneath the toilet.

The next job is to lay on the wallpaper we have bought for our cloakroom. It is special wallpaper and we carefully lined each strip starting with the one immediately behind the toilet and then working one way, leftwards towards the door, and then doing the final two strips to the right of the toilet, coming around on to the linen cupboard and turning a few inches on the side wall. We then carefully trimmed the bottom edge so it neatly terminated to the skirting and then did the same at the top. We had to dab a few edges and joints with more paste to help stick it down.

The next step in decorating the walls, is to put on several coats of varnish all over the wallpaper, to provide a protective and water resistant surface. We put on a third coat immediately behind the toilet itself because it will get even more scrubbed as you would expect.

We then sliced a thin piece of oak off one of our planks and then run it through our router to give it a gentle moon crescent shape. We rubbed it smooth and then gave it a coat of PU varnish with a mid-brown dye. We stuck it on the edge of the wallpaper that just came around the linen cupboard corner. This will protect the edge of the paper from being damaged.

Then we noticed that some of the blue grey walls were showing signs of wear and tear, probably caused by when we were doing the vanity unit and the lower shelf underneath. So, we gave the grey walls a touch up coat of paint.

The next step is a very important one, is the mounting of the toilet!! We carefully cut through the wallpaper to where the two pipes needed to come through the wall, then the two bolts sticking out, ready for the toilet and finally, the square push button module for flushing the toilet. We followed the instructions for measuring the length of the two plastic pipes, one for supplying the flushing water and the bigger pipe to take away the water. We then push the toilet on to the two bolts and made sure that it was level. We tightened the nuts until the toilet was nearly back against the wall, at which point, we ran a line of clear PU sealant between the edge of the toilet and the wall and finish doing up the nuts tight. We carefully scraped any excess away.
And finally, we installed the flush buttons module. We connected the tiny air pipe from the cistern and then clicked the module into place. It has magnets to hold it tight. Very clever.

We then press the button .. and it flushes !!
And no leaks !!

The other thing we did was to connect up a temporary tap to our cold water supply. It is an ordinary tap, with a multi turn knob. Nothing fancy. We now have the ability to have running water. We got soap in a bottle, plus also a bar of soap. We did buy a plug for the sink but it wasn’t a very good quality as it doesn’t hold the water for hours and hours. We will have to find another one.

We then ordered a large mirror measuring 600mm wide by 1200mm tall. It is a frameless and also has hidden hooks so it hangs slightly proud of the wall. We also bought a toilet roll holder and a hand towel holder, plus also a toilet brush and finally, a small swing lid rubbish bin.

The last thing we did for the Cloakroom, was to install the sliding door module. We didn’t get as far as implementing the compress air system because we decided that the sliding mechanism we spent a few weeks designing isn’t working as well as we hoped. We will mount what we got and make use of it for now, but, we will use a different sliding mechanism in the future and replace this one with a new one. We probably will move it to the Kitchen because it is likely that the sliding doors will be rarely used.
So we managed to get the module up inside the wall and screwed it into position. We then got a sheet of OSB board and sliced it up into two 450mm wide by 2100mm tall pieces. We then cut a narrow piece of MDF board and glue that to the edge. Next, we bent a couple pieces of aluminium 40mm wide flat bar to make a couple of L shaped brackets, with a slot cut in the top to allow the hanging of the two halves of the door to hook onto the carriage. We then cut a couple of finger grooves on the edge of both doors, on both sides so that one could open and close them. The last thing we did, was to use short length of draught excluder brushes and mount them near the bottom of the door, one on each side of the door so that the brushes are very slightly pressing into the surface and this holds the door nice and steady.

This is just a temporary doors, as it is only 11mm thick. We will replace them with proper 45mm thick ones with frosted patterned glass later on.

We started another job recently, this time to design and create our Vanity Unit for our Cloakroom. We wanted a simple design, in a natural darker colour, to match the décor and not to be too big, or too small, but just right! We always liked the design of the basin bowl to be “cut” into the vanity work surface itself so that everything is flush and smoothly flowing from one surface into another.

So, the first job is to design and make a mould for the bowl itself. We glued together five layers of 25mm thick insulation boards, the largest one measuring 270mm wide by 450mm wide, shaped like a letter D. Then, the next layers were consecutively shrinking smaller around the curvy parts, but aligned up on the flat edge. It is now looking like a domed shaped pyramid, with the steps to get to the next level. We then, used a surfform shaper to remove the excess material from these steps, to smooth out the whole thing into a gentle curving bowl.

We then scraped around the flat back edge, to give it a pleasing softness to the two outside wings and scraped all over the bowl to improve the shape.

We then covered this foam layered object with two-part wood filler material, to fill in all the holes that accidentally get created and then sand it more thoroughly all over again. We repeated this process several times, patching small areas with more filler, until it was looking good.

The last piece to add to the mould, was the reinforcing drain hole layer. We will need to drill a hole in the bottom of the bowl eventually, therefore, it would be good if that area of the bowl should be reinforced with extra layers of glass fibre when we come to make the actual bowl itself. So, we found an old 100mm diameter disc and chamfered one edge with a flat 45degree slope, to make the glass fibre strands to bend and lie into the mould without sticking up. We stuck this wooden disc, which was only 11mm thick with more of the wood filler and then filled in around the edges, to make sure that it doesn’t have any “concave” hollows or pits, for the finished product to accidentally get stuck to the mould when we try taking them apart!

We noticed that the edge around the top of the bowl mould was rather jagged and we couldn’t get the wood filler to stick strongly enough so we went on to Plan B.
We laid the mould flat on a large smooth board with had parcel brown tape stuck to it and then covered the whole thing with Gel Coat resin and leave it to set.

While that was setting, we got some 10mm thick cement board and sliced it up into two 300mm wide pieces. We then glued them together using PU gun foam glue and flattened them together with six 25kg concrete blocks. Next, we very carefully measured the gap in the Cloakroom where the Vanity Unit is going, into the alcove that is formed by the Linen cupboard. We needed to measure both the widths at the back and front, plus also measure the angle of the wall surfaces which turned out to be 89.6° for the left back corner, and 91.6° for the right back corner. The back width was 755mm and the front edge measured 760mm wide. So we transferred these measurements to our double thick cement board and sliced the left and right edge very carefully.
In order to help us fit this cement board “worktop” into this alcove, we got two pieces of battens and screwed them onto the wall at a point so the top surface will be at 800mm off the floor. Even though we were very careful in slicing the cement board, it still needed rasping on some parts of the left edge, to make it slide in and fit right back against the wall. We also had to rasp the two corners because they are gently curving as well.

When we carefully cut around the edge of the mould, to release it from the flat base, we noticed that there were still missing chunks around the edge, the resin is transparent so we couldn’t see how much resin there was and also we were running out of that particular batch.

We took this opportunity to install a releasing mechanism to our mould, by drilling a 6mm hole right through the middle so that we could glue in an air pipe. We also widen out the entrance to the hole, the one at the bottom of the bowl, so that when we come to glue the flexible pipe in, we will seal up the joint between the resin skin and the pipe itself.

so we stuck the mould back down again on the base (after putting more parcel tape over it) and mixed up a little bit more resin, this time adding a bit of colour, green. We blobbed a line of it all the way around the edge of the mould and also we dribbled some into our new hole to doubly make sure that the compressed air won’t “peal” off the wrong layer !!

While that coat of filler was setting, we went off to cut two more pieces of cement boards, but this time only 200mm deep, and glued them together with the same PU foam glue as before, weighted down with four concrete blocks.
Then, while we waited for that glue to set, we sliced 50mm wide strips off a 12mm thick cement board, to start making the upstand strip that will go around the edge of the vanity unit. We carefully drilled screw holes through the base board and up into the upstand pieces. We had to replace one piece because we didn’t drill out the pilot hole wide enough to allow the screw to go in without breaking the hard cement strip apart. We were successful the second time around after testing various sizes. It needed a 3mm pilot hole and a 3.5mm clearance hole, to allow the 40mm long 3.5mm wide screw to go in fully.

By this time, the glue had set so we got our 200mm wide strip and place on top the other base board, because the same shape and size also fitted very well at the lower shelf position. So, we placed the larger piece on top of the 200mm piece and sliced off the excess ends. We rounded the back two corners, just like the base board and both of them slid into place very neatly.
We positioned the batten for the lower shelf so it just sat slightly higher than the waste drain hole going through the side wall. We drilled a clearance large hole through the batten and then screwed the two pieces on to the wall. We decided that we only needed two of them, a left one and a right one only.

We then painted them the same grey colour as the rest of the wall. We did the other battens for the main vanity unit as well.

One of the last things we did at the end of one of our days doing this job, was to finish filling in the mould around the edge with the wood filler. We now can get that nice and smooth and we had enough time at the end of the day, to coat a final top-coat resin all over and let it set overnight.

Upon the following day, we trimmed off the various drip marks hanging off the bottom of the mould and then proceeded to polish the mould with layers and layers of wax. We had a special tin of wax release substance that is especially designed for glass fibre resin production where the wax is put on to the mould so that the resin cannot stick to it and should pop off fairly easily .. we hope !!
We put on six layers in total, each layer needing 15minutes for the wax to dry before applying the next layer.

While we waited, we got on with another task of shaping the 50mm wide upstand pieces that we previously have cut and screwed. We put on a 50mm radius curves on the beginning of the two side upstands, and then, routed a quarter round on the front edge of all four upstand pieces. We continued to use this quarter round cutter to trim the front edge of the flat top of the vanity unit, on both top edge and bottom edge, to form a bull nose profile. We also did the same to the lower shelf as well.

Now, we dived into the deep end and went ahead to cover our basin mould with three layers of glass fibre, with regular resin on each layer, and allowed it to cure and harden.
We then trimmed the dangling “curtain” of glass fibre off the bottom of the mould, tidied up the edge

Then we attempted to “blow-off” the finished basin off the mould by squirting in compressed air down the air pipe we had installed .. but .. alas .. it didn’t work!! OOOO Boy!
We tried to jam two crowbars deep into the foam base of the mould, tied some string between them and tried yanking the mould off .. but .. alas .. NO Joy! It broke the foam material.
This meant that we had to destroy our lovely mould! We hacked out all the foam and started nibbling the inner mould layer. It seems that the glass fibre basin part had stuck to our mould in several places, hence why we couldn’t release the mould. It seems that the waxing process didn’t do a complete coverage all over the mould. We are not sure to why. Phew!!
It took us several hours to rip the foam stuff out and then carefully, chip away the thin layer of resin from the basin bowl. We ended up with a couple of spots that needed grinding to remove the excess material. We eventually got our basin bowl out of it .. But, we will have to make another mould for the other wet rooms that contains a vanity unit with a basin. Phew!

Now, we can mark out the cut out shape for the bowl, on the cement base board of our Vanity Unit, and proceeded to cut the piece so we ended up with the bowl fitting snuggly into place. We blunted the blade on the jigsaw as it is very hard cement material.

Now that we have a boundary between the flat surface of the vanity unit and the bowl, we now can position the locations for the soap depression, plus also for the nail brush and the plug itself. We set up the router to use a hemisphere cutter bit and using a pre-made template (a piece of 6mm MDF board with a 100mm circle for the soap dish, an oval elongated shape for the nail brush and a smaller round one for the plug) and carefully cut away the cement material until we had three depressions, neatly arranged around the edge of the basin bowl, starting on the left hand side and finishing with the plug depression centred, above the overflow outlet and the drain hole. There would be room for a bottle of liquid soap and then finally, the spout itself to give a gentle fountain of water etc.

We then glued the basin bowl into the cut out zone of the cement base board, using lots of PU construction glue which is very sticky and very tough once it is set. We left it 24 hours to cure and harden. We stuck a couple of bricks on top to hold down the bowl (which is upside down) sitting on our work table.

Then, we proceeded to put a little vertical piece of the same cement sandwich board we had left-over, to form a little barrier just under the front edge of the vanity unit and connects to the curve of the bowl. We did this on both left- and right- and sides. We use a small piece of 20mm wooden batten to help secure these pieces into place and then we put a gentle quarter round on the lower edge to remove any sharp edges, before we continued to glue these two pieces into place using 5minutes PU glue, we also stuck down the four pieces of our upstand that goes around the edge of the work top.

It is getting there .. !

The next task is to fill in all the corners with two-part resin base filler, to smooth the transition on all the joints, to provide a curve so that the glass fibre can be encouraged to bend around the corners without breaking, or popping clear of the resin before it had set.

While we remembered, one of the final use of the router, was to cut another quarter round on the edge of the basin bowl that is touching the cement work top, again to allow the glass fibre to bend down into the bowl itself.

We put in more filler around the upstand and use a 22mm tube to form a curved profile on all the 90degree corners and that was rubbed down smooth.

We built a little “stand” to hold the vanity unit up and clear off the table so we can apply the fibre glass and resin all over, without sticking to the table etc.

So, after rubbing down all the fillings, we blasted the whole thing with compressed air and move this and the stand to the Garage and stuck on two layers of glass fibre with resin all over the top surface and bowl.

While that was curing, we got the second shelf and drilled a large clearance hole at the back of the shelf, centred. It is a 50mm wide hole to allow the push fit plumbing right angle connector up underneath so it can receive the waste pipe coming down from the trap and the bottom of the bowl itself. We then made a quick and easy legs to hold up the shelf, using two small pieces of OSB and carefully screwed two long screws on each narrow ends of the shelf, through a small piece of plastic pipe to act as a spacer. The whole thing held the shelf well clear of the table.

Upon the following day, We then trimmed off all the sticking out straggling strands of glass fibre and turned over the whole thing so we could resin and apply more fibre glass underneath the vanity unit and especially doing the front half of the bowl, to strengthen it so it will be much stronger and resistance to being bumped into in the Cloakroom.

While that was setting, we also did the second shelf and we covered it in glass fibre in one go, doing both sides at the same time, including going over the drain hole as well.

After lunch, We proceeded to trimmed all the loose strands off both the vanity unit and the second shelf. Then rub all over everywhere and we put in extra filler here and there, to touch up areas that became a bit too thin after sanding the lumps away. We also thickened up the edge around the bowl and filling in air gaps that accidentally formed during the second stage of putting glass fibre on. We also decided to put the white filler on all the flat surface, to help remove much of the gently wavy surface.

At this point, we are reaching the moment where we need to apply the final colouring layers, but, we do need various plumbing bits and pieces, like the over-flow and the drain hole, to come from our suppliers.

So, in the meantime, while we waited for our plumbing order to arrive, we got on with colouring up the second shelf, with the final dark grey with a hint of blue in it. We also collected up a collection of tiny pieces of glitter of various colours, sieving out all the larger lumps. We put the shelf back on the support stand so that we could coat both sides in one go. We mixed 200g of the grey / blue mixture we previously settled on. We experimented with lots of different shades of greys and different levels of blues as well

And we settled on this darker shade of grey and were happy with the blue content as well.
So we coated the second shelf with the grey colour and while it is still tacky, carefully sprinkled on our tiny pieces of glitter all over, on both sides of the shelf. Then, later on, several hours later, we applied a protective clear coat of resin which is designed to help seal everything in and provide a very smooth finish.

By now, our plumbing items arrives, a over-flow plastic pipe so we drilled a new hole into our basin bowl, just below the rim, using a core drill of 27mm diameter and then digging out a little bit of the cement board underneath and behind the bowl. We then glued this plastic right angle pipe in with lots of the plastic filler, covering up the threaded part and over the flange at the back, and squashing it all together by using the nut to push the filler tight into the thread and the surrounding area. After it had set, we sliced off the plastic nut and the remaining pipe that was sticking out into the bowl area. We sanded it smooth and then touched up some small hollow bits until we got it lovely and smooth.

The next job was to install the drain hole and plug. It measures 41mm across on the threaded section and the flange is 61mm across. So, we used a 44mm core drill but we added an extra piece of wood, cut into a circle, a piece of 3mm thick plywood, also cut to a 61mm circle and positioned it behind the core drill bit. We stuck on a small piece of 60grit sandpaper on the wooden disc and then locked the core drill on to its holder. We then got a middle position in the bottom of the basin bowl and drilled through the thick layers of glass fibre and resin material from underneath first, then turning over the whole thing, continued to cut the remainder of the hole from the bowl side downwards. Then, we did continue grinding the surface away using the little sanding disc we had attached so it created a little hollow for the flange of the drain hole to sit neatly into place and just be below the surface. We chamfered the hole a little bit to allow the plastic moulded drain hole unit to fit in better etc.

We then trimmed down the long threaded part so there was just enough thread left to attach a solvent weld adapter to let us fit a right angle 32mm waste pipe piece, to bring the waste pipe back towards the wall and then turn to go down towards the second shelf and the large clearance hole we have already made.

The last thing we did for this particular day, is to coat the grey / blue gel coat on to the under side of the vanity unit all over and then sprinkle our glitter everywhere. We used a small fan to provide a gentle wind to blow the glitter up onto the vertical surfaces. We have just been holding up a pinch of the sparkles about 2 feet above the target area and sprinkle it that way. but, that doesn’t work so well for vertical surfaces so we used a little fan instead.

Upon the next day, an interrupted day with a external meeting to attend, we put on the final glossy top-coat resin on to the back half of the vanity unit (it is still upside-down) because the grey resin is very slightly tacky and we felt that turning it over wouldn’t be a good idea without causing problems like getting stuck etc. So, the top-coat went on to cover up the grey and provides a very hard finish.

We had a little bit of time before lunch so we took our finished second shelf, cleaned off all the dribbles around the back edges and fitted it in our Cloakroom. Well, not actually fitted exactly, I mean, with glue and everything! Just resting there on the support battens so we can sort out the waste plumbing pipes that will be coming down from the bowl. We are using push-fit plumbing parts, to take the waste water through the trap (which is above the shelf) and then turns a right angle immediately underneath the shelf. Then, a short distance at an angle to a second bend but this time only a 45degrees bend before a longer straight run all the way to the final socket that is buried in the linen cupboard wall.

Just before lunch, the glossy top-coat has harden completely so we turned the whole Vanity unit over and then applied the grey / blue gel-coat mixture all over the top surfaces and inside the bowl, to complete the coverage.

Then, after the aforementioned meeting, we use the last hour of the day to apply the glossy top-coat resin all over the grey surfaces, all in one go so that we do not get a join line or something.

The last job to do was to clean all the back edges, similar to what we did to the second shelf and tidied up the drain hole so it will provide a flat surface for the attachment to fit snuggly down tight, which we sealed in with black sealant. We then finished off the last bit of the waste pipe from underneath the bowl, including connecting the overflow output and join into the vertical trap. We cut down the long excess lengths of the drain hole attachment so it fitted closer to the bowl and reduce the unsightly views of waste pipes etc.

That pretty much finishes the construction of the Vanity Unit for our Cloakroom. The next job is to make our waterfall tap and we have some ideas which we would like to try out first. We may have to buy a waterfall tap but they are difficult to find without any mixer handle built-in.

Now that we have finished installing the air ducting and water pipework that are travelling underneath the Cloakroom, we are now tackling the task of building up the inner surfaces of the walls inside the Cloakroom. One of the first jobs, is to put on horizontal utility rails on the door wall, so that we can have a small “control” panel beside the Vanity Unit and the entrance of the door, to provide knobs and buttons, to control the water coming out of the spout in terms of temperature and flow rate. Also, we would have a display to show the temperature when the water is flowing, and default back to showing the time otherwise. There would be a loudspeaker built in so we could have gentle music, or play gentle tones like the hourly chimes etc. finally, there would be a button to make the doors open!! We set this Utility Channel a little bit higher than our normal height, adding another 100mm. We wanted to keep clear of the Vanity Unit so that it is easier to keep the area clean and dry, and keep any water from splashing up to the Oak “control” panel.
We also put another “control” panel over near where the toilet is situated. We created a niche in between two vertical legs, measuring 350mm wide. The niche is based on the same size and position as the Utility Channel, lifted up that extra 100mm higher. This niche will provide a place where we can put in controls for flushing the toilet, controlling the lighting levels etc. We drilled a hole in the bottom rail for a 20mm pipe, to go down inside the wall, underneath the floor and then back up inside the wall beside the doorway, to the other control box. Then we put in a short pipe connecting this control box to the Hall’s Utility Channel, so we can bring in data and power cables from the outside.
The second control box also have a 20mm pipe put in the side and that travels down the wall and this time, goes across to the toilet and terminates inside the toilet internal framework. This will provide the means of adding extra features to the toilet, like having a heated seat, or perhaps have sensors to detect when the seat has been lifted up. A third hole was also drilled in the side of that control box, a smaller hole, to take a small 6mm plastic pipe, which also goes down the wall and across to the toilet as well, which will join with the existing bellows that causes the flush action to occur.

We have measured exactly where these control boxes are, so when the wall boards have been installed, we can cut out the small segment of the wall, to to replace it with a piece of oak which will have the buttons and bits and pieces on them.

We then turned to the task of installing the toilet framework and cistern into the body of the wall. We have gone for wall mounted toilets so it makes it much easier to keep the floor nice and clean, but also, hides away the cistern itself too. There will be just a small square access removable panel, so one could service the cistern, or even replace the filling mechanism etc. Everything is hidden inside the wall itself and will only show a small push button to flush the loo. We decided to take the opportunity to raise the toilet up higher than typical toilet bowls are, because it is sensible as we are all getting older. This metal framework provides a method of sliding up and down, to control the overall height of the ceramic bowl and we went for an additional 100mm higher, to make it come up to around 500mm off the floor, instead of the usual 400mm. Having done that, we then could measured the position of the large waste soil pipe and cut a piece to go horizontally from the stack, which then turns 90degrees upwards to join onto the elbow connecting pipe that comes from the ceramic bowl itself. Now, that we got this major pipework in place, we then could secure the framework into place using four coach hex-headed screws, two at the top and a further two at the bottom. That is it!

We then connected the cold water 15mm pipe to the back of the unit, using a tank connector fitting to a copper pipe, which we soldered on a short piece of copper pipe and then bolted on a right angle bend which then had the plastic 15mm pipe inserted in and tightened down.

We put in a couple of 20mm pipes, one of them coming from Bedroom One’s Utility Channel, to provide mains electricity if we ever needed that and the second pipe, coming across from the small control box already mentioned above.

That concludes all the conduits and pipes going from here to there, including going under the floor as well, so we could get on with the next task. This is where we put in lots of glass wool pieces in that large space under the flooring, like we have been doing in all the other rooms, to insulate against the cold (or perhaps hot!) concrete slab.

Then we glued and screwed the floorboard pieces that were already done (years ago!).

This meant that we can now, and did, install the first layers of wall boards. The first layer is the usual 18mm OSB sheets and we worked our way around the room, doing each wall segment. Some of the pieces had pipes sticking through, like the 32mm waste pipe socket, waiting for the pipe to come from the basin, the bigger 68mm air ducting and the 15mm hot water pipe, to connect to the spout sitting on the Vanity unit. The tricky bit was the toilet wall, because it had two round holes to put in, plus also the “access” panel to the cistern, but also, a future rectangle access panel just above the ceramic bowl itself.

At this point, we decided that we would install some additional lighting into the Cloakroom so we could see what we are doing better! We had various samples of LED lamps so we gathered three of them together and placed them on short pieces of 12mm thick plywood and hang them up inside the ceiling space so that they don’t intrude into the room itself as we will be moving around and fitting large pieces of our plasterboard sheets. We wired the lamps back out to the Hall and put on a pull-cord switch for a local control when we have turned on the Hall lighting.

The next job was to trim the excess OSB material away from the door edges and also to cut out the Utility Channel that is beside the Vanity unit as well. At this point, we had a sudden thought that we had forgotten to make some provision for a future installation of more sensors and controls in and around the Vanity Unit itself, like detecting when the water is overflowing, or controlling the water by tapping the spout. So we needed an additional 20mm conduit installed, coming from inside the proposed Vanity Unit cabinet and going up to the Utility Channel we had just cut out. But, in order to do this, we had to sliced away a small portion of our new wall, to expose the hollow wall and the lower part of the utility channel framework itself. There, we drilled a 22mm down through the CLS timber for a conduit to fit through. We then took two pieces of our 20mm wide rigid plastic tubing and heated them to bend them 90degree right angles in them. Them using a small piece of 25mm wide water pipe, we could join the two halves together to form a single continuous conduit, going through the aforementioned hole. We finally, drilled a 20mm hole through the OSB cut-away piece, and then glued this piece back into the wall again. We will sand it all down once the glue has set rock hard and it will all disappear when we cover the walls with our plasterboard material anyway!

Next, we sanded all the wall surfaces, to remove any splinters and roughen up the surface, ready for the glue. We also gently washed the walls down with a damp cloth as well, to remove the dust.
Now, we can proceed to put on the Fermacell boards (our high performance plasterboards), and started on the back wall where the toilet will be hanging. We measured the locations of the various holes, including the “letter-box” future expansion, we drew a thick black line around the edge of the rectangular hole, wrote the exact measurements on the wall itself and then took several photos for future records ..

.. and we continued to measure the other holes etc. The width of the wall in total was 1100mm so we collected up a sheet off our pile and took it to the Great Room where we had our working table set up. We marked out the newly measured locations of the four round holes (one large one, one medium one and two much smaller ones for the bolts) and the large rectangular hole for the “pretty” plate that has the flush buttons on it. These got drilled and sawn, as well as the whole sheet was sliced narrower to that 1100mm width. We test fitted the board back in the Cloakroom and we only needed to rasp some of the edges a little bit, to make them fit smoothly. Once we were happy, We dampened down the back side of the fermacell sheet, and sprayed PU foam glue all over the wall, put extra construction PU glue around the toilet holes and pressed the sheet into place. We then stapled it all over and screwed a half dozen of short screws in and around the various holes, to make sure that the fermacell is well and truly squashed flat against the OSB board, so that when the ceramic toilet bowl itself is bolted into place, it won’t crush, wobble or damage the fermacell material.

We proceeded to cover up the other five surfaces in the room, including doing the surrounds around the door entrance way itself.

Before we could get on with doing the next step with the skirting boards, we needed to trim all the corners, plus also slice a small radius on the outside corners (the two vertical edges and one horizontal edges of the doorway, and also the corner of the linen cupboard). We had to open both of our doors to let out the cloud of fine gypsum plaster dust to slowly drift out of the house!!

The next job was to put on the skirting board, but not a traditional wooden kind, but, made up using more fermacell material, cut to produce a heap of 100mm wide strips. We recycled many of old left-over pieces we had lying around on our sheet rack and from doing the current covering of the Cloakroom’s walls. But before gluing and stapling them on to the bottom of the walls, we passed them through our table router which had the giant quarter turn of a circle router bit and adjusted so that it sliced off a glancing chunk of the fermacell, to make a smooth and slightly elongated curve at the top of the skirting board pieces.
We went around the whole room, which adds up to about 6metres in total, gluing and stapling each piece in place. The only section that needed special treatment was the section underneath the Vanity Unit, because it is where the fresh air comes out into the room. So we make a special piece where we curved up and over the “hole” and then filled in on either side with smaller lengths of the skirting boards.

We then sanded the three outside corners, to make a gentle bend around from one line of skirting to the next line. All these skirting boards will be ultimately covered up with the glass fibre resin combination, going right across the floor and making a waterproof sealed surface.

Next, we filled in all the staple holes, rubbed down the occasional joins, and filled in the five inside corners and smoothed down by using a 32mm diameter pipe, to produce a gentle rounded contour. We did the same with the floor to skirting board edges but this time used a 50mm diameter pipe so the fibre glass and resin covering will smoothly curved around up the edges, to make it nice and easy to wash the floor. We went around putting a little bit more on the vertical contoured corners, to help fill in small gaps etc. and then rubbed down using a piece of sandpaper stuck to a short length of the 32mm wide pipe so that we could end up all nice and smooth.

We also have been testing various combinations of fibre glass and resin on test samples of the chipboard flooring material, to see how well it sticks down etc. We also painted fermacell pieces too. Then, we coated some of them with the finishing “top-coat” to see how slippery it could be to walk on. The test revealed that it is very well stuck down and the white top-coat is not that slippery when it is dry.

So with that in mind, we proceeded to prepare the fibre glass matting for the floor, tearing pieces off the roll, to put down three layers in total all over, with one layer going up the skirting boards around the edges. We needed to achieve this task of painting the resin into the glass fibre, in such a way, that we can reach over to apply the resin without stepping on to any “wet” parts. This meant that the pieces of matting had to be arranged so that each portion of the Cloakroom was completed fully, before moving along to the next section. We decided to do the area under the toilet first, then do the vanity basin section next, and then the middle section and finally the doorway area to finish off. These jigsaw pieces were bundled up and put into a line, ready for the actual application of the polyester resin. The doorway had an strip of 12mm plywood covered up in parcel tape, to make it non-stick and screwed down so the edge of the fibre glass can be terminated neatly to approximately where the sliding door will hang. This 12mm thick plywood strip is a guide to control how much glass fibre we should put down and we are aiming for a gentle slope going up when exiting the room. This will provide a double useful feature; one for keeping in any water spills and secondly, to make the transition from the hard, and much thinner floor covering, to the much thicker carpet and underlay that will be put down in the Hall. So, we had a pile of torn off pieces of the fibre glass matting, getting narrower and narrower, as we get closer and closer to the “barrier” defined by the 12mm plywood strip. This task took several hours to get right!
So after lunch, we got on with the job of mixing up the resin, we put in red colouring dye, to give it some interesting shade of colour and mixing batches, one for each section. We had five mixing pots so we started with 1.2kg of resin, put in 12ml of hardener and got on with the three matting pieces next to the toilet wall. We discovered that we needed to mix a further 500grams to finish off this section. Them, we proceeded with a 1.6kg of resin, to do the section under the Vanity unit and then moving across to the middle section with another 1.6kg of mixture. The last section of the floor had a 1.5kg of resin and then finally, an additional 600grams to build up the slope in the doorway. This took about three hours to complete this task, making sure that all the layers were pressed down, using the metal ribbed roller, to get rid of air bubbles and make sure the resin is well mixed with the glass fibre. All the skirting boards had plenty of resin brushed on them as well, as we were doing each area.

We did come along and lay down another heap of glass fibre strips across the doorway, to build up the gentle slope, to raise up the surface so that it meets the carpet and underlay out in the Hall.

This is the basic floor covering, which we will double check for bumps, sand the surface to make it smooth and then apply a finishing coats, perhaps two coats, to provide the waterproofing seal to the whole room and 100mm up the walls. This final “top-coat” will be done later on when we have finished routing various conduits going over the Cloakroom before we install the ceiling fermacell boards and complete the whole room, including painting it and the walls with our colour scheme. Once that is all done, we then will do the final coat of resin on our floor!!

So talking about conduits, we did that task of putting any conduits up inside the ceiling space, see Installation of a Variety of Conduits from Tech Cupboard for details.

Next, we installed some lighting conduits up inside the ceiling, short 40mm flexible conduits that goes from one lamp position to the next one, and then another short length to connect to the outside world in the Hall, to join up with the controller board out there.

The final job to do up there, is to build an air ventilation module that will allow a circular “pretty” vent to be installed in the middle of the ceiling and then a 100mm diameter flexible pipe to come out the side of this module and goes through several joists, heading towards the main ventilation ducting that runs right around the whole house, up on the First Floor, inside the triangular void space. We constructed the module using pieces of left-over floorboards and glued and screwed it together to form a box. We then slid inside a piece of flexible plastic sheet, it is only 2mm thick and we cut it down so it fitted inside the box, but push it into a curve to help guide the air flow more gently around the bends. We also put in two little side wings as well, to guide the air towards the output pipe connector, which is actually a sweep right angle bend, with a socket sticking in the correct direction, to take our purple flexible pipe that will go through the joist as mentioned above.

The last piece to put in is a small bracing wooden bar across the box so that the “pretty” air vent cover can be fixed up against the ceiling surface later on after everything have been painted.

Now that we got our air vent module built, we push it up into the correct location, approximately centred in the middle of the room and marked off where the air socket is facing the webbing of the joist. After taking it out again, we proceeded to saw a series of 114mm diameter holes through five consecutive joist. We wanted the flexible purple conduit to poke up just before our main Air Duct which runs around inside our triangular void space upstairs. We drilled two overlapping large holes through the floorboard so it produces an elongated “oval” hole for the purple pipe to slide through at an angle and reasonably pointing towards the future Air Duct.

We slid back the air vent module and screwed it in so it is all flushed with the bottoms of the joist and then pushed the purple pipe into the side socket and sealed it up with aluminium tape.

That concludes all the conduits and pipes that lives up in the ceiling space, so we could start the process of installing the fermacell sheets up there to cover up the joists .. at last! But, one of the first tasks to do, is to glue a strip of “2 by 1” batten around the edge of the walls so that we had a something to enable us to screw up the ceiling boards. Sometimes, the walls are positioned in between joists and there is nothing up there to secure the edge of the fermacell.
Next, is cutting smaller pieces of the fermacell material to build up the jigsaw pieces to slide horizontally into each section. It was quite an effort to work out the precise order. We took advantage of the joists running across the room, to act as a wide battens to allow us to butt together the two edges of the fermacell and have it nice and tight and flat, without having to do any major sanding. We got it organised so that we had only one tongue and groove joint to do, connecting the piece above the Vanity Unit and the two pieces over the door entrance. We ended up with four pieces.

The next task is to drill various holes for the three lamps and a giant hole for the air vent. We didn’t want to have to cut these holes upside-down so we did it while we had the pieces loose.

Now, it is time to glue and screw them up! We used our construction PU glue because it has a much longer working time, to allow us to slide the pieces around, to get them joined together and hooked into place, before we screwed any of the four pieces. We even pre-started the screws while each piece was lying on the floor so we didn’t have to used two hands to hold up a screw and drive it in. It helped enormously, so much so, that we are considering buying another piece of equipment to automatically drive screws in, by just using one hand – the screws are held in a long strip which automatically feeds into the screw driver!!

We put up the piece over the Vanity Unit first, then the Toilet piece next, then the middle piece and finally the fourth piece over the door entrance way. We put plenty of glue on all the joists and battens, plus also the fermacell joints as well.

Next, we went around filling in the edges at the top of the walls, to form a gentle contour between the wall and the ceiling, at the same time, filling in the little gap that we had at the top as well. We used a 32mm diameter plastic pipe to shape the tile adhesive mixture, because we got loads of it, but also, it is very easy to rub it smooth afterwards.

We also put up our white concentric ventilation cover, in the new large hole, screwing it into place, plus also, we put in three flush fitting LED lamps too.

The next job is to rub down all these fillings and apply additional treatment to areas that didn’t quite “do the job” first time around. While these are drying, we carried on making the heat exchanger module for our Hot Tank.

Now reaching this point in our Cloakroom, we proceeded to spray the walls and ceiling, with the first coat of white emulsion paint. Our very useful sprayer machine is a powerful machine and did a quick work of covering all the walls and ceiling. We took down the air ventilation grill and put little plastic bags over the three LED lamps and sealed them up. They still glow brightly so they are still helping us!
After the first coat, we went around and gently rubbed all the surfaces and discovered several missing holes which didn’t get filled in. We also spotted some of the joints between fermacell pieces that also needed more attentive work done to them too.

The second coat is now on and we are nearly there. The surfaces is much smoother now, but, we still spotted unfilled holes !! So, we carried on and filled in those little holes and rubbed the surfaces down again smooth.

It is now ready for the final coat of paint and doing the wallpapering. Our next job is to clean and oil the exterior cladding and oak frames.