Call us on 0493 182 997 or email us at russell@russellfixa.com.au
Knox Street, Belmore
This customer was referred to me by her sister. It looked like someone who wasn’t qualified had tried to fix it themselves.
There was also an area on the side of the house where it looked as though the wall had subsided due to water damage from the roof, which had caused tiles to crack.
I provided an obligation-free quote to fix all the tiles, grout and silicone. I recommended the customer have the outside drainage issue fixed as a priority before we fixed the bathroom. A few months later they had saved the money and approved the quote.
I removed the mirror and hardware from this bathroom before I started. I then removed all the silicone from the entire bathroom. My focus was fixing all the broken and cracked tiles.
The customer was lucky that they found some spare tiles under the house, but we only had a few, meaning I had to be very careful not to damage any other tiles while removing the broken ones.
I cut around the broken tiles with a grinder with a diamond cutting disc. I then used a chisel to gently tap out the broken tiles before preparing the surface for the new tiles. The spare tiles were cut and trial fitted. It takes a few goes to get them perfect. I then mixed up some tile adhesive and stuck them back down.
The tile adhesive takes a while to dry so I let them set overnight.
The next day, with all the broken and cracked tiles fixed, I moved on to removing all the grout in the bathroom. The walls were reasonably easy, but the shower floor had a 40mm square tile which takes forever to carefully remove the grout. I had to removed it because I needed to install resin epoxy (I was not sure how good the waterproofing would be under the tiles).
The bathroom was then deep cleaned and treated for mould before I installed a travertine coloured cement-based grout in the wall tiles. I left it all to dry overnight. Now for the tricky bit!
I mixed up a large batch of travertine coloured two-part epoxy grout. I used a piping bag to install the epoxy grout around the shower perimeter. Then using a metal scraper, I forced the epoxy grout into the joints throughout the base and used a softer plastic scraper to scrape off the excess. I then detailed and sponge off. The rest of the floor was regrouted using the same cement-based travertine-coloured grout as the walls and was a perfect match to the epoxy grout in the shower base. I left everything overnight again to set.
The last thing to do was the silicone. I installed travertine-coloured silicone to the vertical wall joints and and white silicone around the floor's perimeter. I also installed white silicone above the vanity. One last tidy and detail and it was done.
This job took 3 days and cost the customer $2800*