Bathroom refit - blocking up door

[Emilian]

Hi

Am refitting bathroom which includes knocking through wall between bathroom and adjacent toilet, moving toilet into bathroom side and then fitting a new shower enclosure into the toilet side.

Current state of play:

- Toilet out
- 90 deg soil pipe connection rotated 180 deg to allow connection of bog in new location on other side of soil stack.
- 2 x radiator and pipework removed from either side of bathroom and toilet dividing wall.
- New radiator replumbed under window where toilet used to be
- Dividing wall between bath and toilet removed leaving approx 20 cm of blockwork either side.

Next job is to remove the toilet door and frame and block the door up.

As this is 1st floor with only floorboards to work off I assume that this will need to be studded and plasterboarded. I have searched the forum and found this useful contribution from Richard C (see 4th post):

//www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=177455

Does option 2 sound the way to go ?

My main issue here is that the walls surrounding the doorframe are concrete block (these are in the main supoorted by walls below wheras the floor under the door is not). Whilst the render/plaster came off the small amount of brickwork in my removed dividing wall easily it was less keen to part company from the much rougher surfaced blockwork - hence possible difficulty in removing 200mm all round the door opening to allow overlap of plasterboard.

The following couple of pics give you an idea of where things are at and what ive got:

Right hand side door to be blocked up

Untitled

• Emilian
• 2 Mar 2013
• 1

Removed wall between bathroom and toilet - this was stich drilled / chiselled after the following website put me off using a cutting disk - warning - case 3 pic looks grim http://www.head-face-med.com/content/4/1/1

Untitled

• Emilian
• 2 Mar 2013
• 1

Door to be blocked up. New shower enclosure to be installed in the corner where the buckets are - the blocked up door will be the wall with the shower valve and pipework in it with a tiled finish).

Untitled

• Emilian
• 2 Mar 2013
• 2

Will put an approx 15cm plasterboarded top frame to cover the ceiling hole and to complete the framed opening between bath and shower areas

Untitled

• Emilian
• 2 Mar 2013
• 2

Blockwork, render and plaster finish to small section of remaining wall between bath area and new shower area

Untitled

• Emilian
• 2 Mar 2013
• 1

Much as I love my SDS I dont want to go at the small area of wall between the bathroom and toilet doors too hard to remove the render/plaster - the wall is load bearing. Am I therefore better off going for option 3 which Richard listed and hoping I get lucky and avoid cracks ? From the shower side I would probably aim to borad the whole of the wall including over the existing plaster to minimise any risk of cracking on that side.

Any advice on the best way to build studwork would also be appreciated - ie to you fully build a frame which you then insert and screw in place or do you screw in the 4 sides and then screw in additional studs verticall / horizontally with diagonal screws ?

Apologies - all a bit of a ramble but any feedback would be welcome.

Cheers

Emilian

 

[pinenot]

By far for the inexperienced is building the frame in place.
make sure the framing you use allows for both the two sheets of plasterboard, used to cover it and any skim coat, bringing the whole up to the original wall thickness.
As for the second choice I don't know what you are referring to...pinenot

 

[Emilian]

Thanks for the reply. My original post refers to advice given in another thread asking the same question, which stated:



The best way of blocking up an old door is to – block(work) it up, base plaster/render out to the surrounding wall, tape the joins & then skim the whole wall.

• The 2nd-best option is to remove the plaster back to block around 300mm all around the door opening, stud out the opening & fix the PB to the stud & surrounding wall, plaster out to the surrounding wall, tape the joins & then skim the whole wall.

• The 3rd –best option is to do as you propose; stud out the opening, fix the PB, tape the joins & try to skim & blend it in.

You can achieve good results but, to be honest, it will always be visible to those that are looking! The biggest disadvantage is that the original door opening may crack around the join; this will always be a very strong possibility due to the different expansion rates between the block wall & the timber stud/plasterboard partition; hence the reason for the 2nd option.

Personally I would only ever do it 1 or 2 to be reasonably sure of success but if you think you may want to convert it back at some point then, I guess, you could live with it but you DEFINITELY need to loose the door lining. Plaster will never stick to it; at best you’ll be left with 2 tramline cracks around the original opening but, at worst, the plaster will in all probability fall off the wood & you’ll be left with a trench!



I am trying to avoid differnetial cracking but think getting the render off from the wall surrounding the door may be tricky. Also if overlapping the new plasterboard onto the adjacent wall (if render does come off) would mean going for 9mm plasterboard as it looks like render/plaster is approx 12.5 mm (which surely wont be even over height of wall) so this might give rise to differing levels if using 12.5mm PB ?

Thanks

Emiliain[/i]

 

[pinenot]

T o remove the plaster off the surrounding wall is quite simple, use a bolster (thin bladed stone chisel, also referred to as a feather splinter) 75mm should do. Now use Expandmet between bared blocks and plasterboard, this should take care of cracks...pinenot

 

[ivixor]

For what it's worth, I did a very similar operation.

Knocked out dividing wall, removed door, and built studwork in it's place. No cracks at the join at all and it's not visible. Mind you, I built a whole run of wall as in from an existing corner to a doorway, rather than filled in a gap in a larger wall.

A word of caution though - I measured the wall so that it was parallel to the the existing exterior wall, making the foolish assumption that it would be straight - it was not, and this is fairly obvious when you look at the tiling in the bathroom. Oh well.