Temporary waterproofing

[lewisk]

Here's the deal, my girlfriend is eight months pregnant (this was not so much planned), before becomming pregnant she bought a fixer upper flat, with the idea that she could have a project to complete over the next couple of years (nice idea). We are now in the process of getting hers and now my flat up to the baby safe required standard. We've had to budget for new windows and we are leaving certain rooms until after she goes back to work, and we can do them properly, the bathroom is a room which we were going to leave till later but there is a temporary issue of only having a bath and no shower. This seems like a small thing, but I personally think a shower is necessary for convenience, because a bath is time consuming especially when you have a baby to look after. I can quite happily buy a tap shower mixer as a temporary measure, the issue is that the wall where the shower will be fixed is not waterproofed or tiled, it is wall papered and then painted (cheers previous owners). We're not that happy with tiling because of the cost, and didn't really want to do it cheeply because it would be too time consuming and would only be ripped down in the next 6 months to a year. Is there any way to waterproof the wall using a temporary measure? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[tpt]

quickest way would be a wrap around shower rail and a curtain that goes all the way round you and tucks inside the bath while your showering.

the steam would probably ruin your paint\paper but it will do you a favor as you'll need to take this off before you tile!

 

[Richard C]

Slightly different angle on TPT’s idea; I fitted two telescopic shower rails running parallel over the bath & ran with this for a year before gutting the bathroom.

A word of warning regarding safety; make sure you get your girlfriend to use a non-slip shower mat. Over bath showers & curtains can be extremely slippery as I found out when I ended up on the bathroom floor; I was in so much pain I thought I had broken my plastering arm but it turned out to be just extreme bruising.

 

[Lower]

You can buy solid panels that look like tiles that you could stick to the wall and seal to the bath. Most of them look pretty crap but will do the job for you in the short term.

Non slip shower matt is a good idea as you will no doubt be bathing the baby in the bath at some point. The various baby skin moisturisers that your girlfriend will no doubt want to add to the bath water make the bath surface slippery as anything.