If you do not have the rooms for a cubicle then cladding around a shower bath will give you the next best thing
This question crops up time and time again when people look to revamp their bathroom:
“Should I install a bath or a shower as part of of my bathroom makeover?”
The easy answer is to install both. But this will only be an option if you have enough room and enough money in the budget.
Because many British bathrooms are relatively small. Fitting both a bath and a shower cubicle is not possible in most cases. This has resulted in the rise in popularity of the shower-bath.
What Is A Shower Bath?
A shower bath is similar to a standard bath but one end has a larger showering area.
Standard baths can be a little narrow for showering. So manufacturers came up with the idea of making one end of the bath bigger. The other end remain standard in size – usually 700mm. This is important because the positioning of baths can be next to doors or other bathroom items.
Shower baths are handed – left or right had. Check carefully when ordering because different manufacturers can use different terminology.
The enlarged showering area can be curved or straight depending on the design. To keep the spray inside the bath they are sold complete with a glass shower screen. These are made to fit the specific bath. The screen from one manufacturer might not fit the bath from a different make.
This is not usually a problem until someone breaks a screen several years down the line. They then find that replacements are not easy to obtain and screens from other makes are not the correct shape or size.
Royal Bathrooms have a great range of shower baths available here .
Obviously once the bath has been fitted you need to cover the walls with a waterproof material. Bathroom cladding is the perfect product for this task.
Bathroom Cladding For The Walls
Tiles are the first port of call for people in this situation but there is an alternative to tiles that is just as good – bathroom cladding.
The great advantage of bathroom cladding is that it can go up over unprepared surfaces. It can even be installed straight over existing tiles. This can save a lot of mess, time and money.
There is no need to plaster the walls but if this has already be done then it is a great surface to work with. If the walls are slightly uneven then all that is needed is some extra adhesive. On smooth surfaces you can apply a “snake” of adhesive on the rear of teach panel. On on uneven surfaces you apply the adhesive in blobs. You can then push the panel home and it will find its own level.
It is vital when installing a bath or shower that this is performed before the cladding is fitted. This type of panelling is decorative – it is not structural. So the bath in this case should be fixed to the wall ad then the panels run down onto the bath surface and sealed.
Any holes drilled should also be carefully sealed – in these photos you can see that the shower mixer, slider rail and bath shower screen will all be fitted on top of the cladding so holes will have been drilled through into the wall behind.
