Principles for redoing a bathroom in an old house?

[Jblakes]

Nice timing, we are in the middle of our bathroom. Because we are having complete new bathroom suite, I've knocked everything off the walls (pretty much the same as every other room) had a nice collection of layers including wall paper .

Turns out the small external portion of the wall had masonry paint on it too, that's gone. I feel it's almost therapeutic swinging a hammer round, until I realise I need to clean the mess up.

Anyway, my question on bathrooms is, what do/have people got on the roof. Ours is, I assume standard plasterboard which has blown in places due to the moisture. My thinking is what about adding wood fibre boarding. Because of where the roof sits you can't get to is from the loft (you need to crawl). So if I use wood fibre boards on the ceiling and then board from the loft with wood fibre. I'd have two boards with air gap in the middle. Then don't add insulation in the roof. Would that work?

I'm hoping so, it will be warm enough (I hope) and be a great way to absorb the moisture?

 

[mdfx]

Thanks everybody for responding. I posted this before a holiday and it's great to see all the responses. I'm going to admit I'm still not sure what to do, but it's good not to see a lot of "don't do lime plaster/breathability"

 

[WetWales]

Any updates?

 

[RowanTree]

long time lurker - but I've taken the plunge and registered to answer this (and also, admittedly, because we're ramping up the DIY so I suspect I might have to finally ask some questions)

We've a 1880s labourers cottage - the relevant info is our bathroom is about 2m x 2.5m - we've a shower over a bath and a small tiled area around that. But the rest of the walls are lime plaster & limewash on solid stone walls, and, when we moved it, it still had a metre square of gypsum plaster at top of one wall, on corner away from the shower, where previous owner had attempted to repair a leak,

Every time we had showers, the section with gypsum plaster had condensation running down it, but the rest of the walls seemed ... completely dry. The difference was surprisingly large. Since then we've replaced the gypsum with lime plaster and, a year later, no mould or anything anywhere, and we don't have an extractor fan, and the room is cold - no insulation - just a mix of original and new lime plaster on foot thick stone walls, and over winter, we even sealed the window shut

So - just one more anecdote to add to the mix - but in my n=1 experience, the lime plaster/limewash combo can happily deal with a lot of condensation from multiple showers a day with no special fans etc - we just open the door afterwards (caveat - the rest of the house is also (now) fully lime plaster/limewash ). Hope this helps someone

 

[elizabeth]

Good morning, I can vouch for lime walls being excellent at coping with moisture. We stripped our cob bathroom walls of gypsum plaster; walls were constantly running wet and mould, didn’t install a fan, just opened a window for ventilation after a shower/bath and eight years on, no mould what so ever. The moisture is absorbed by the lime and released when the conditions are right gradually over the day/night, hence why it’s good to have ventilation such as trickle vents or a less than tight fitting window.

 

[WetWales]

Im coming back to this thread after a few weeks as bathroom wall decision imminent! (Long overdue!)

Our shower will sit against 1 internal stud wall that will be wood wool board and then Lime over the top, and an external rubble slate stone -2 foot thick wall - we are putting SECIL eco cork insulating lime render on external walls before a lime skim,

So do we put on the external wall as planned the eco cork and lime and THEN we put the elements tile board and then tiles, the same with the wood wool boards and lime, and THEN the elements tile board stuff,

Or should we “miss out” the lime plaster on the areas where the elements bored will be and just go straight for the tile board onto the Stone/stud wall or is it a good idea to line plaster at all and then the element board over the top for the shower cubicle?

Many thanks!

Attached a photo of our handmade slate shower tray made by a friend from the local slate quarry here in mid wales, it’s so so heavy but a thing of beauty