Hi there,
I'm renovating a room in my house (Victorian terrace in London) that I'd like to turn into a bathroom. I'm going top-down and I've pretty much finished building the roof - which wasn't in good shape, I'm now ready to start preparing the walls.
At some point in the past, the interior brick walls of the room have been covered with a layer of 20mm - 30mm of what I think is concrete, over most of the walls (up to about 2.5 meters high). That has then been painted and wallpapered over the years. I have a few questions before I start work, I'd really appreciate any advice as I'm learning as I go with all of this! I can add some pics for reference if that'd help?
1. Although the wallpaper/paint is quite well adhered (I do need a heat-gun to loosen it before scraping)... am I right in thinking that I should really remove the paint and paper before tiling? If possible I'd like to do all of the prep work myself before getting someone in to do the tiling, is there anything else I need to do before? Or can they mastic straight onto concrete? I've seen that people install a water proof boarding system such as wedi board, should I do this around all of the bathroom or just where the shower is going to go?
2. Do I need to worry about damp/moisture? Considering it's old style brick with lime mortar and the room will be a bathroom, is there any reason that it'd be better to take the concrete off the walls? Is wedi board on-top of concrete good or bad for any reason?
3. Should I use concrete to cover-up the rest of the brick in a similar way, would that make tiling easier? Just wondering what I use to even up the covering at the top.
4. Is there a sensible list/plan of things to do in a bathroom when building it from scratch (which I'm pretty much doing) anyone has a link to? I'm trying to work out if I put the VCL in before I put cabling in for electrics etc (shower and downlighting will be from ceiling).
Any help/pointers/general advice/things to consider would be really appreciated!
Cheers, Matt
