PVC bathroom wall panels

My son fitted some in his bathroom recently. The walls weren't good so he had to do some battening first. The end result looks good; compared to tiling there's a reduced risk of leakage and no grout to get moldy. I'll be tempted to use them if I get-around to revamping the shower room.

Thanks. One thought occurred to me. Often when tiling you have to tile around some obstacle like a pipe you can't undo. That's easy because you can just trim down some tiles and worst case cut a tile in two.

But with a big panel like a 1m wide one, what do you do? Do you cut the panel in half so you can get it around each side of the pipe? Do you slit the panel down one side and try to shimmy the slit around the pipe without having to fully chop the panel (depending on the size of the pipe and how much give there is in the panel to allow it to flex around the pipe).

Watched a few videos of people installing the boards and they always seem to install on completely blank walls with no plumbing, which doesn't have the problem.

Theo

If tiling, it's always best (essential!) to remove anything on the wall and re-fix it after tiling and grouting. In the case of pipes to a shower mixer, for example, just measure their position and drill holes in the panel. If there *really* is something that you can't remove then box around it before tiling and then tile over the boxing. What can't you undo?

And on perfectly plumb walls and with exactly 90 degree corners.

It's also worth considering with plumbing fittings how they are going to be replaced when they go wrong. Pipes behind something like the boards you are intended to use need to be fully supported so they don't move back into the hole when, say, a thermostatic mixer valve is removed.

Surface pipework. It's one thing to retile the bathroom, it's another to have to replumb the hot/cold/central heating/toilet waste pipes for the entire house because they happen to run through the area.

That would be fine if you're ripping out the entire bathroom and starting from scratch, but if you're retrofitting into an existing bathroom you have certain obstacles to work around.

Theo

For DIY at home, I'd make the extra effort and redo the pipes.

When I replaced our bath with a low threshold shower (my wife is disabled and was struggling with the bath), I moved the cold feed to the bathroom, to the loft header tanks and the upstairs central heating pipes, all of which ran under the bath, to under the floor.

I removed and replaced the bath multiple times, over a number of days, as I sorted the plumbing, repaired the floor, plastered the wall below the bath top and re-tiled the new shower area, without ever leaving us without the bath (and the old shower over it), for more than a day.

The bath was removed for the final time, the shower tray and cubicle installed, still with the old shower in it. The new shower and pump was connected the next day, the old one removed and the missing tile behind the old shower valve added.

With five of us in the house and the two adults both normally showering every day, we did not want to be without the shower for a day.

With the bath gone, there was room for the toilet to be better oriented, so the soil pipe was re-done too.

Well you may have answered your own question. That is one of the major disadvantages with this method of wall covering.

If I was re-tiling my bathroom again I would remove the sink and closed coupled toilet and/or radiator in order to get better access and to give a much neater job. Once removed I would also fully tile the wall, including the bits that may not be seen. When I did this a few years back I did have to make some adjustments to the toilet waste but the last part of the water supply to the cistern and sink taps being flexi connectors didn't cause any problems. I did have the advantage that the radiator brackets gave two options for the distance away from the wall the radiator sat and originally it was a the greater distance. It was fitted back with the smaller distance and the tails/valves still mated with the pipes coming out of the floor. I have since replaced the radiator and I had to modify the pipe to the tails/valves.

I've seen quite a few bathrooms where the tiling around bathroom fittings have been a complete bodge because items that could have be removed hadn't been and where tiles had been badly cut around in-situ items with the voids packed with grout.

This is rather than problem. If you have to live there while works are ongoing, and you aren't blessed with multiple bathrooms, you need a certain level of facilities to be in place at all times. That means you can't strip everything back to bare walls and redo everything from scratch, unless you can manage it all in a day (which a normal DIYer can't).

Either that or you all move out while you/somebody else does the work, at which point the clock is ticking (and becomes a full time project, not a spare time activity).

Now I may be able to box in some of the pipes which takes away some of the headaches. But having to demount what remains makes the choreography a lot more complicated than just 'slap some stuff on the wall' which you might get from tiling.

Theo

During our recent bathroom re-furb. Domestic management fancied panels but with a high level window within the shower and the need to make a false wall to run pipe work behind I would have been lucky to have one panel in that did not require fettling to fit, so the easier option was tiles but she then went on to insist we tiled with 400 x 250 tiles which was a whole new ball game for me.

Pipework to the sink and toilet and the rest of the house ran under the floor but even that needed a lot of re-doing as the original plumber had swapped over the hot and cold pipes half way and where we wanted the toilet and sink meant joining on would involve nothing short of a convoluted maze. New pipework to the shower heads and an outside tap was simply run in the ceiling having lowered it with a framework with a new plastic plank ceiling.

When you cannot move out it is a real PITA. We demolished a protrusion into the bathroom to create a larger airing cupboard and throughout most of the initial work kept as much of the original stuff in place until we absolutely needed to but it was no mean feat. A radiator hung on what was the protrusion was the first to be moved. It went on and off three times first it was hung to get the pipework up to it. Later it came off to get the tile backer boards on and finally off again to tile behind.

The toilet had to be kept in constant use and it too moved about a bit with first fix pipework and flooring having to be done in two stages at one point all we had in the bathroom was the toilet balanced on a few of the old planks and a bucket of water to flush it sitting on it involved dangling ones legs in the foundations, third world had nothing on this! Washing for a while involved a lot of flannel and bowl washing for a time and we remarkably stayed odour free for the duration. You have never seen two more happy people when we could finally shower again.

You can do without a bath, shower and sink but a toilet is an absolute essential and the re-furb was dominated by being able to re-connect it at a moments notice. Next house is a must that it has two toilets.

Richard

Why not hire a portable toilet?

Or just use a large bucket :)

That was the point, by doing the work myself, I could ensure that the washbasin and bath/shower were available each morning. We have a second toilet, but I could have ensured that the main one stayed available if necessary. If I'd not been able to do it myself, we'd likely have ended up with no bath/shower, while all the prep work for the final installation was done. The flexibility of DIY made it MORE practical.

We had a bathroom fitted several years ago, including a stand alone shower cubical. We had made wall boards. They are plywood with a coating and interlock - you can just see the join. You often see them in hotels etc. They aren’t cheap - not sure of the price as they part of the overall job- but the look much better than PVC.

We’ve since had the bath / shower in our ensuite converted to just a shower using them we were so pleased- they can be fitted over the existing tiles, hiding ( for example) where the old bath and shower fitting was.

Not sure of the brand but a good bathroom shop should stock them.

Is that an acrylic coating? I've seen that offered as an alternative to PVC.

These:

One thing I did wonder about was scratching - bumps and abrasive cleaners.

I'm a bit dubious about the wood ones - they sound like just plywood with a laminate facing, like kitchen worktop. Yes in theory it's waterproof, as long as the laminate isn't punctured, but...

Theo

While that's true, it reduces the practical time you can spend making progress as at the end of each work period you have to put everything back into a working state. Although I suppose a temporary arrangement might not be so onerous if your 'customers' can put up with it - fresh water can come through hoses and basins can drain into buckets. But I'd not want to be mounting and demounting a toilet or bath every weekend.

(and your customers may not like using your bucket-sink for the month or more of weekends needed to do the job)

If this is a full time DIY job, just avoiding moving out by maintaining basic facilities, then I could see that being more attractive than having to move out.

It sounds like it needs some fairly detailed phasing as to which parts happen when, including how to plumb temporary facilities in the interim.

Theo

Why do the facilities need to moved every weekend? For instance, you only need to disconnect the toilet at the point where you are going to place one or two metre wide boards behind it. At the point you have installed the one or two panels you reconnect the toilet. It can stay connected whist you panel the rest of the room.

You have to plan ahead and perhaps obtain extra fittings for the waste as the toilet may/will sit a few inches forward of its old position. If the toilet inlet requires an isolation valve and flexi connector that can be done as a separate job in advance.

In my experience removing fittings to sinks/toilets that have been in place for a log time is that flexible rubber seals, O rings or fibre washers have gone somewhat brittle or have distorted if they haven't been fitted completely square to the mating surface. Seriously consider replacing with new rather than trying reuse old fittings. It may save you a lot of time and your sanity.

I wouldn't necessarily move a bath to panel underneath the top rim (the bits that will not be seen). However if the fitting of battening and the panels means that you cannot sensibly seal the top edge of a bath to the wall then you would have to move it anyway.

No temporary facilities were needed. The toilet and washbasin were available for most of the time and when (during tiling the toilet end of the floor and moving the toilet position) the toilet wasn't or (during fitting the new cupboard and mounting the washbasin on part of it) the washbasin wasn't, we, as I said, still had the second toilet and washbasin.

The bath was what needed to be moved multiple times. However, it was fibreglass, so light enough to move; the pipes to the taps were changed the first time, as the taps did not need to be reconnected, with the shower being over the bath; the shower remained connected and working throughout the work, until after the new one had been fitted and plumbed.

All that needed disconnecting and reconnecting each time was the bath waste.

Only on the final weekend of installing the shower tray and cubicle; changing the waste to suit; and tiling the final row of tiles, over the tray, were we without the shower for more than the hours that I was working - from about 10am on Saturday to about 6pm on Sunday.