Help needed with bathrom ledge repair job!

[jimdixon]

The bathroom is in a state after a handyman quit halfway through a job, and I'd be really glad of any advice from this forum. I would like to know how I can make the bath and ledge waterproof and watertight.

Here are my questions:

1. What is the easiest way to fill in the holes on either side of the bath, ideally without having to remove the bath or wooden ledge?

2. When the shower is in use, water leaks out of the base of the hose where it comes out of the taps. Do I just need a washer to fix this, or a new shower hose, or could the problem be with the tap unit itself?

3. The handyman left without painting the wood. He was actually meant to build a tile ledge, but he said the walls were rotten / not solid enough to drill into. I don't even know if he used the right wood for the ledge he did build. What can I now do to salvage it - would it be reasonably resistant if I painted it with several layers of gloss white paint?

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Thanks so much for your help!

 

[kbdiy]

Simple answer first:
2) Yes there is a rubber washer in the hose where it screws onto the taps. The connector only needs to be hand tight but can be nipped up a bit more to see if that fixes it, otherwise new washer or perhaps complete hose.

1) & 3) it's a mess. The ply he used is obviously already soaked so paint will not stick to it and won't protect it from constant showering. The broken tile will also allow a small amount of water to pass even if the rest is sealed properly. Any filler in the hole over the bath will still absorb water and eventually allow water to leak through below. As a minimum the area behind the taps should be higher than the bath, slope slightly towards the bath and be tiled, grouted and sealed, but that is a minimum and could not be expected to last very long. He might well have been right about the state of the walls and decided it was wiser to quit rather than do a job which would only last about 5 minutes and have you complain to him that it was leaking again.

In short, it all needs ripping out and doing properly. I strongly suspect your budget might be an issue there and you might be expecting that a quick bodge will do. The handyman was right to walk away in my view.

 

[jimdixon]

Thanks for your advice, kbdiy. I'm sure you're right - to do the job properly, the whole partition wall probably needs to be rebuilt as I think it has rotten over the years. The bathroom floor needs reconcreting too. All the result of a small, heavily used bathroom, that didn't receive any attention in many years.

Unfortunately I was stupid enough to pay the handyman in full when he asked for it on the first day. He didn't show up the next day, made excuses when I got him on the phone, and now won't take my calls and ignores messages and emails. So he has done a runner after being paid for work he has not done.

I'm a long-term tenant in a cheap rented flat, and the landlord let me find a tradesman and take the cost out of the rent. I doubt he would agree to pay for it twice, and I don't have a budget of my own to pay anybody else to fix it. So yes, I am looking for how to do a quick bodge!

I have a pack of white tiles, some tile adhesive, and B&Q tile cutter. So I am wondering if it would be possible to dry the wood out with a hairdryer, then glue and grout tiles on top?

Cutting the tiles will be quite difficult because it needs to be done diagonally, but I have enough to be able to break a few before I get the hang of it.

As for the broken wall tile on the right hand side, and the gap on the left hand ledge, I'm not sure what to do....

 

[tictic]

Build a small bulkhead at this area and then use PVC to cover it then seal with a good quality silicone...

use dry wall screws and cover caps to secure the PVC to your treated timber frame to form bulkhead...