Wet Room Showers
We love a flush fit, easy access, tiled wet room shower tray. Excluding the traditional white acrylic or resin shower trays, is a sure fire way to make your design feel cleaner, larger and more open. Some stigma is carried by the wet room system due to years of poor techniques and improper installation leading to failure. Our methods are belt and braces and won’t let you down.
Wet room pre tiling
Here we see a wet room complete with bench-seat pre tiling. The walls have been boarded with Jackoboard, a waterproof extruded polystyrene board. All joints and screw holes are sealed with tape, including to the tray. Now, even if any water should get through the grout, tile, or silicone, it has nowhere to go other than evaporate off, or down the drain behind the tile. A rock solid method of installation, ensuring a leak proof wet room for the years to come.
Linear Shower Drain and UFH
Here we see the same shower post wall tiling and pre floor. The drain to the rear is linear and the underfloor heating is installed. Heating a shower tray like this is not only luxurious under foot, but helps any remaining water droplets, after showering, evaporate away.
Sleek & Stylish
Carrying the floor finish through the shower tray, and doing away with a traditional shower door removes barriers and helps the space to open and flow. Note the additional ‘envelope’ cuts made to the tiles to ensure the proper fall, directing the water to the drain.
Structure
Structural issues in bathroom renovations are common place. Clients often want to knock rooms together, move doorways, or install particularly heavy loads. Some issues are often caused by incorrect methods carried out by previous installers. Below is an example of such an issue and the required remedy.
Traditional/Vintage/Rustic
A popular choice amongst our clients with a unique set of challenges, particularly due to the weight of a cast iron roll top bath.
Weakened joists not to regs
We discovered a previous installer had removed a large chunk of the joists in order to run waste pipe. This was already structurally unsound. In addition these joists were going to have to support a cast iron bath weighing 180kg. Advice was taken from a structural engineer, and within the day, we had the joists strengthened above and beyond requirements with minimum fuss.
Load-bearing Walls
For this design the doorway had to be moved. However, the new opening removed all support from a large steel in the loft space above. As such a double lintel had to be fitted to spread the weight of the steal, and the load it carried, around either side of the new doorway. Again, all work was completed to the structural engineer’s specifications supplied through us.
Large Format Tiles
Currently tile manufacturing technology is such that larger and larger porcelain tiles are now being produced. We’ve now handled tiles up to 3 metres in length. These tiles bring their own unique challenges when it comes to installation. But the benefits are there to be seen. Virtually no grout lines and the possibility of ‘book matched’ installation can create truly stunning spaces.
Specialist Equipment
Here we see the lifting rig required for handling these extra large format tiles. Specialist cutting equipment is also required.
Book Matched Tile
Some large format tiles offer the option of book matching. This is where the vein of the tile is mirrored replicating the way multiple tiles could be sliced from a single slab of marble, then laid next to each other to create the book matched effect.
Underfloor Heating
There are two main types of UFH. Wet and electric. Wet runs from a manifold connected to your boiler, where as electric works through resistance cable laid under your floor finish. By and large, unless your project is either a new build or part of an entire house renovation, then electric is going to be the preferred option. There are a number of benefits to using electric in a bathroom refurb. Firstly, independent control is much cheaper and easier than a wet system, meaning even when your main heating is not on, in the summer months for example, you can still take the chill off the floor tile, which can be a cold material under bare foot. Electric also helps reduce the overall height of the finished floor compared to a wet system, which can already be a challenge with bathroom refurbs, keeping the difference of floor heights at the door threshold to a minimum.
Insulation
First we glue and screw insulation boards to the subfloor. Although this is a step often skipped by some contractors, it’s proven to be necessary to maximise the efficiency of the floor. We want the heat to rise into the floor covering, not get lost into the subfloor beneath.
The Heating Element
We then lay the heating element and floor probe. Care is taken not to lay the cable under any permanent fixtures such as the bath, to avoid over heating, and that an even spacing is maintained throughout. We want a nice even heat throughout the floor covering.
Screed
We then screed over the cable with a thin layer of levelling compound. This encapsulates the cable, both helping with efficiency and protecting the cable from the trowel when tiling.
Complete Control
Everything is then hooked up to the thermostat. Pictured is the Warmup 4IE. We recommend this touchscreen thermostat to our customers due to brand reputation, 7 day programming and the smart wifi features, allowing your UFH to be controlled from your phone.
Trim or Mitre
Whenever we come across an external corner when tiling, there is the question of how best to finish the edge. External corners are largely unavoidable, every shelf, niche or bath corner will have one. The cheap option, and only option if using a glazed ceramic tile, is to use tile trim. These days there are a number of types available all the way from simple white plastic to bronze. If however, you have a porcelain tile, the options increase. If the internal pigment of the tile is a good match to the front, then simply polishing up any exposed cut edges, removes the need for trim and is a very clean smart finish. The ultimate in sleekness however, is to mitre all the external corners. There really is nothing that beats this finish, but the additional work involved is considerable and therefore additional costs apply.
Trim
The many levels and niches of this design meant many external corners. Here we see a chrome tile trim in action, covering otherwise exposed cut edges, neatly finishing the installation.
Porcelain Pigment
Here we see a good match between the pigment in the body of the porcelain and the face of the tile. Here the customer opted to take advantage of this and avoid what some see as unsightly tile trim.
The Mitre
Here we see a mitred external corner on a porcelain tile. The tile is cut at 45° and back filled with an epoxy resin colour matched to the tile. Once dry the resin is then polished to leave a crisp clean tight seam. In this case both sides of the corner were taken from the same tile allowing the marble veins to wrap around. This premium finish causes transitions to disappear with only the face of each tile exposed. Porcelain is an extremely hard material, and specialist equipment is required to perfect this technique. Accuracy of cut is also paramount. As such, this finish comes at an additional cost per linear meter of external corner.
Niche
Niches, or recessed shelving, is a great way to create handy spaces in showers and next to baths for storage of shampoos and cosmetics. Negating the need for shelving on suckers, or chrome corner shelving often seen in bathrooms. They are however, only an option when the wall in question is a stud wall. They cannot be installed in solid masonry walls unless you are willing to build out the wall with stud first, therefore losing 70mm-100mm of your overall finished room size.
Panoramic
This wide landscape niche with mosaic feature inlay was a joy to install, and offered the customer a great space to store their required products for both shower and bath simultaneously.
Mirror & Lighting
Here we took advantage of the niche location to achieve both shelving and a basin mirror simultaneously. We also installed miniature spotlights in the roof of the niches to ensure the best visibility when applying make-up or shaving. Note the shower niche also lit in the reflection of the mirror!
LED
Another panoramic bath niche, only this time rather than lit by a spotlight, an LED strip light with diffuser was neatly hidden in the roof of the niche. This technique generates a much more even spread of light across the niche.
Mirrors & Glass
The use of mirrors can help a bathroom design in many ways. Yes we can hang mirror cabinets for additional storage, but where possible flush fitting an oversized mirror into the tile layout can work wonders, particularly in small spaces. Fitting a bespoke mirror from waste height to ceiling and the full width of a wall in a small bathroom, can maximise our perception of the space. Add in a de-mister heating element and you’ll never be wiping away condensation and putting hand marks on your mirror ever again. The use of glass can also open up the space. Where possible, do away with traditional shower doors, fit bespoke frameless floor to ceiling glass. Create a half height wall to offer some separation of space, and then place glass on top to contain splashes.
Truly Bespoke
Here, the glass rides over the tiled bath surround before dropping to the base of the shower tray. The bespoke glass made this bathroom layout possible.
Infinity Glass
We installed this impressive piece of glass in a beautiful Cheshire home. The toughened glass is imbedded both into the tile and the ceiling resulting in a truly frameless ‘infinity’ install.
A Clear Reflection
The same bathroom features an impressive panoramic mirror. Installed with a de-mister heating pad wired to the lighting circuit, condensation will never be a problem here. And the mirror is fitted flush to the adjacent tile.
From our base in M20 Didsbury we cover most of Greater Manchester, including Didsbury, Hale, Sale, Eccles, Chorlton, Urmston, Cheadle & Trafford. Into Cheshire we have worked in Wilmslow, Prestbury, Knutsford, Mobberley, Alderley Edge and beyond. If you’re at all unsure, just call and we’ll let you know if you are within an area which we cover.