Some of you know that I have planned to fix my bathroom for about a year. There were various reasons:
- The shower stall had broken doors, although I just hung some curtains up which worked fine, but looked somewhat ghetto
- Some tiles on the floor had cracked
- The ceiling had dark spots which may or may not have been mold
- The toilet felt like it didn’t flush properly and also made weird crying noises after flushing
- The floor heat stopped working about a year ago which was when I finally decided to fix everything
- Additionally: The apartment had a very small water tank, for some reason. Which meant that if I did the dishes, or even if I took a long shower, there wouldn’t be enough hot water for finishing the shower.
The factory year of this water heater is 2007, which is two years before I bought the apartment in 2009. Did the old heater die? Or did the previous heater steal it for his new apartment before selling this apartment? I have no idea.
So eventually I finally hired someone to tear down the entire bathroom and rebuild it. Renovations started in January while I was still in Hong Kong, and was finished at the start of February. Just stayed at my parents’ place until it was finished.
The total amount of the renovations ended up being about 280K NOK, which included:
- Tearing down old bathroom
This photo was taken after they had already put cement on the floor and wooden boards on the walls though. - Redoing most of the pipes which were kind of messily done when the apartment was built
- Buying all the tiles and bathroom inventory
- Building the new bathroom (including floor heating, tiles, ceiling spotlights and all the inventory)
- Some electricity work including moving the light switches to the outside as per bathroom regulations, and installing separate electrical lines for washing machine
- Installing the new water tank and a dishwashing machine
The finished bathroom and kitchen:
One thing I didn’t think too much about was that while the swing doors for the bath makes the bathroom seem bigger, they also need more space around them in order to open. With the washing machine on the left side, that means I usually have to open the right door towards me, so I can’t put any of the old storage shelves there anymore. But since I now have a mirror cabinet I can put my miscellaneous bathroom stuff in there now, so luckily I don’t need the shelf as much anymore.
I moved the wooden shelf to the kitchen and put my food on it instead, so it’s easier to find my food compared to when I put it in the corner cabinet where it was hard to see what was in the back. The pots and pans used to be in a cabinet where the dishwashing machine was, so they were moved to the corner cabinet, and the cabinet itself was moved to a living room and it still has some of my kitchen machines.
Now with a bigger water heater and also a dishwashing machine, I can finally take a shower without hot water running out! And the new rain shower is very comfy, though it was several times more expensive than a regular shower. The bathroom and kitchen seems tidier now too! Although there is some leftover furniture and useless stuff in the living room that I haven’t figured out what to do with yet…
Oh, I just realized I still haven’t removed the plastic from the dishwashing machine.