Transcription

Hello! Bernadette Janson and welcome back to She Renovates the podcast for women who want to create an income and life they love through renovating.

So welcome back to another episode in our mini series: 14 Days To A New Bathroom and we’re trying something different today. So we’re actually videoing this episode. The quality of the sound might not be so good because we’re in a bathroom and there’s lots of hard surfaces so I apologize for that in advance.

The next thing I wanted to say is when we started our podcast in our 1st podcast we ran a competition and offered a free copy of the newly released book “Secrets Of Property Millionaires Exposed” in which I’m featured. And thank you, we got a lot of really lovely reviews!. But I’ve not been able to send the book to some other people, because I don’t know their identity. So if you were one of those people who put in one of those first 10 reviews, can you please just take a snapshot or a screenshot of your review and email it to me: bernadette@theschoolofrenovating.com with your address. So I can send you out a copy of the book.

And for anyone else, I’ve got a few more copies that I can contribute to the cause. So if you would like one please do the same. Go and write a review and send me a screenshot and I’ve got another ten copies to give away. So that’s 20 in total. I look forward to hearing from you.

Okay, so today we’re talking about bathroom bling: tapware and the first thing I want to say is the tapware is really the jewelry. It really brings the bathroom to life, so I’m choosing the right tap where it’s really important.

You’ve got to think about lots of things – Is it going to last? Is it going to be good quality? Is it going to be easy to use? And so, those are some of the things that we’re going to deal with today.

Now the first thing you’ll want to decide is – Are you going to go for a mixer tap or a hot and cold? Okay, now we’ve got mixer taps in this project and I’ll just show you so you can see there. And the reason why I like mixers, one of them is, usually they are a little less expensive, not always.

And the second reason is because you could operate it with one hand, it’s much easier to work with and it’s a much more modern look. Also if you are working in a bathroom that you’re not planning to totally strip out, so you’re trying to conserve some of it, you may not want to go for mixers. Because the peak, it’s called the breaching piece that goes into the wall that actually mixes the hot and the cold together, has to be cut into the wall. So if you’re not wanting to disturb your waterproofing then you’re not able to do that. But if you’re stripping out the tiles and re-waterproofing, yes, go for your life.

And next thing to think about is the colour that you go for. So there’s so many metals in particular that are available, but lots of colours, you can go black, white, red even and lots of really cool metal like gunmetal or copper. So you can get a really edgy look with your tapware, but you want to think about the type of project you’re putting it into. If you’re putting it into a project you’re going to be living in for a long period of time, then you probably don’t want to go with something that’s going to date too much. So have a think about that, maybe go for something more timeless, like stainless steel, which we’ve done. Or polished brass or bust brass is quite popular at the moment. I think that’s quite a good timeless sort of look.

However, if you’re planning to sell the property, then you might want to go for something edgier. Because when someone buys a new property, often they want to have the latest and greatest. So maybe go for something that’s a little bit more on trend, although I’m saying that I’m so over black taps. So I really think that it’s time to put them to bed. As well as often they will scratch quite badly. So they look great to start with and then they don’t look so great. Whatever you choose, keep in mind that you need to have your colours match your taps. So if you put in gunmetal tapware, then you’ve got to find the toilet buttons to match, the towel rails, the fittings on the shower. You are really committing to serious investment. So remember that.

And a consistency is important. It doesn’t mean that you absolutely have to be a slave to everything matching, because if there’s an element that you can’t get to match, I don’t get too hung up on it. But as much as possible, I think if you’re going, say, gunmetal taps, you want to try and get it to fit in as much as possible.

The next thing, is in terms of your taps again, the configuration. I’m just going to show you this tapware again. With the base and so we’ve got more wall mounted mixer tap here, but we could have had a bench mounted one. So sitting behind or if we had a base and that had a hob on it we could have had a hard mounted one which would sit up there. So when you’re going for those types of taps, you really need to know the type of basin and vanity that you’re putting in. So that you can tailor the tap to the basin. Because if you go for a bench mounted one, you need to have something that’s much higher. So it gets up over the edge of the basin and the water gets actually into the basin. Whereas if you’re going for a hob mounted one you won’t want the tall one, because it looks silly. So you’ll need the smaller one.

And so the last point I want to make is around the installation and I alluded to this before. But just be mindful any mixers, the taps in general, that are well mounted are going to have to be cut into the wall and that has to happen at the first stage.

So before any waterproofing, before the walls are sheeted or rendered. That has to happen, like on Day 1. So if you’re going for a mixer taps, you need to have them on hand on day 1 for your plumber to install that breaching piece.

Now another really valuable tip is, make sure that all the remaining components of the taps are kept together. Because it’s a very common thing to get to the end of the job and the plumbers come and say to you, where’s the piece of the tap? And he’s just left it lying around everywhere and then it’s missing and they’re hard to replace. So I really keep them together.

But if you’re going for bench mounted or basin mounted, then the actual connections actually happen in under the bench. So you’ve got a little bit more freedom to move things around.

So I hope you have found this helpful and I’ll put in some images in the show notes as well for anyone that’s not seeing the video. Just to help you understand what I’ve been talking about, it’s a bit tricky talking about something visual without the visuals. Okay. So thanks for that and I’ll see you on the next episode.