One of the things that worries me most about renovating a home is the plumbing. Even though we’ve fitted a DIY ‘beach hut’ style bathroom in the past, I’ve never before needed to move a bath or toilet into a new position. But with limited space in our bathroom and a very dodgy layout where the sink is halfway over the bath, it really does need rejigging!
Check out my last bathroom makeover with a coastal theme
Even though I know it’ll look great in the end, the plumbing side of things is really confusing to me. I can connect taps, seal wastes and clean out pipes, but when it comes to fitting showers and moving water supplies I have no clue! So when is it best to call in a professional? What jobs can I do myself? I don’t want to create a health and safety nightmare in my own bathroom! 
I gave my old sink a facelift with just some new taps
So I’ve been doing my research by reading blogs and watching plumbing videos on YouTube and it’s certainly been a good start to my journey from amateur to pro. Okay, I exaggerate, but at least what my research has done has cleared up what I can and can’t do myself! I read some research on DIY by Slater & Gordon Lawyers and it showed that only 5% of women would be prepared to take on plumbing projects compared with 25% of men. Now, I’m happy having a go at some plumbing but there’s no way I’m doing any soldering of copper pipes. I wouldn’t want to buy all the kit for a start, and I’m not sure I’d do it particularly well – I’m quite slapdash at the best of times! So any kind of heating or hot water work is definitely not my bag! But plumbing using plastic pipes seems to be straightforward enough and I can get an idea of how water systems run around a room. 
I’ve even replaced a bath before – with Cookie’s help, obviously!
I already know that I’m going to need a shorter-than-usual bath in order to fit it in, and that’s quite a specialist search. A shorter length by just a few centimetres means that many of the baths I like the look of just won’t fit in the room. And design-wise, I think that a tap in the centre of the bath would work better than one at the shower-end. So many things to consider, and I’ve discovered just how difficult it is to find exactly what you want when searching online!
I found a wealth of knowledge on showers on the aplumbersdaughter.com blog. Who knew that you’d fit different types of shower depending on the water pressure that comes into your building and even the type (hard or soft) of water that you’re using. I want an eco-friendly water-saving shower head but I also want to have a decent pressure behind the shower so that I’m not standing under a dribble of water! It’s so hard to know what to choose, and I only want to invest in my bathroom once!
Please let me know if you know of a website or blog that’s full of helpful plumbing DIYs (and I’d love to hear about good places to buy bathroom fittings at a budget price!) so please leave me a comment below or tweet me @Cassiefairy with your ideas and tips.
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