Bathroom repairs

 If you have ever needed plumbing work done on the cold or hot water feed in your bathroom or kitchen, I'm sure it brings back stressful memories. Apart from the bashing and banging, exposing these pipes generally requires demolition of parts of the walling, often taking out some of the tiling, which inevitably gets damaged in the process.

Here the bath had to be removed to get at the pipes in the wall

This is but the start of the troubles! Identifying the source of the problem is often not easy, even with sophisticated leak detecting equipment. Here we had to fill the bath and shower with water over several days to be sure that the leak was coming from the water feed and not from the outlets - water travels in mysterious way. In total, the detection part of the job took several weeks, with both bathrooms out of action for the duration.

The next challenge for the owner was to find tiles to match those that had to be removed, an adventure that required much hunting at tile specialist retailers and builders' suppliers. The choice is overwhelming, but none on the market are an exact match. Ceramic tiles are driven by fashion, and even the standard white tile has been adapted over the years from almost completely flat in the 1930s to ones with slightly rounded edges. Coloured and patterned ones have had even more radical changes over the years, so even a relatively new-build home will have tiles that are no longer in stock.

None of the tiles in stock are quite right

Then comes the big question: should we go for the closest match and just hope it looks OK? The answer is almost always "no". Even if you can match the size and proportion of the tile, it will look like a patched job, and over time will really be annoying. At the other extreme, would one have to re-tile the complete room? If you can afford it, this is certainly a good solution from a decor perspective (although not the best for the planet, as it generates much more rubble and embodied energy to make the additional tiles).

A middle way is to select a tile that complements the existing and is used for a clearly designated portion of the room, so that it looks intentional. You could use a contrasting colour or opt for a different texture or pattern. You could even go for highly decorative tiles, although one needs to be careful not to use these over a large expanse of walling, as the effect can be a bit overwhelming.

We opted for a mosaic texture in a similar colour to the existing marbled pattern

In the one bathroom, the exposed pipes were on one wall of the shower and the nib wall next to the toilet. By retiling both of these walls in their entirety, it now looks like this section of walling was intended to be an accent wall. It also helps give continuity from the shower into the rest of the bathroom. Fortunately the bathroom is quite generous in size, so the change in texture does not seem too intense, which is also helped by the similarity of colour of the old and new tiles.

The second bathroom

The second bathroom shares the same tile colour and texture as the main bathroom, so the decision here was to use the same mosaic design, in the matching colour. Here the plumbers had managed to remove the bath without any damage to the tiles on the walls, so only the building in of the bath needed re-tiling. As with the shower in the other bathroom, the effect is that this looks intentional, as an accent in the room. This space is quite a bit smaller, but because the new tiling is below eye-level, the effect is not too dominating.

By using similar colours and working with a change in texture, the effect is timeless. It is far more difficult to achieve such harmony if you mix colours or use more figurative patterns - these can be very effective, but are much more challenging to work with as it is often difficult to visualise how it will turn out, so if you are going to be daring, best consult with a professional designer who has had years of experience!