Browsing OneRoof it’s clear that attractive, well-appointed bathrooms built with quality materials are very sought after in today’s market, and no longer the exclusive domain of five-star hotels and wealthy homeowners living in luxury mansions.
Last weekend the Block NZ’s teams’ family bathrooms were revealed and judged, with Rach and new arrival Connie’s coming out on top, and this week in the midst of creating their master bedrooms and en-suites, the contestants took time out to go back and assess each other’s family bathrooms in pursuit of a $2000 prize for the winner, which turned out to be team Meg and Dan.
These two weeks focusing largely on bathrooms have highlighted the effect and versatility of tiles in wet areas. Judges loved the bathroom created by Papamoa estate agent Rach and newcomer Connie, with its marble-look walls and slate flooring, which won them last week’s room reveal.
Marble also starred in Meg and Dan’s family bathroom, while Tim and Arthur went for a stone effect. Dylan and Keegan perplexed judge Ann-Louise by using the tiles they’d chosen from the original selection she offered them all, by using their small pink tiles vertically instead of horizontally.
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Meanwhile for this weekend’s upcoming unveiling, Rach and Connie, whose confidence grew significantly as the result of their win, have done something extra-bold with emerald-green in their ensuite, which is already starting to look rather dramatic.
Dylan and Keegan, eager to redeem themselves after last week’s poor showing, are creating the biggest ensuite in Block NZ history and have 39sqm of tiles to install. They’ve gone for blue, which also promises to be striking.
Bathrooms on The Block NZ have tended to be controversial, with experts claiming that condensing the process into such short time frames will inevitably result in a less than perfect job.
Site foreman Peter Wolfkamp says doing the Block NZ's bathrooms in five days is a tightly choreographed exercise. Photo / Ted Baghurst
However, conscientious site foreman and Newstalk ZB's Resident Builder Peter Wolfkamp runs a very tight ship and has always made it clear that cutting corners in any way at all, will not be tolerated.
“It’s true that we do renovate a bathroom in five days on-screen, but it’s a carefully choreographed exercise with expert tradespeople lined up to jump in immediately and do their bit, whereas, in real life, that level of co-ordination is rare. You can make it happen, but it poses its own challenges,” he has said.
Mike Baker of Precision Bathrooms is one of Auckland’s most experienced bathroom project managers and installers specialising in getting all the expert tradespeople needed for the job together and ensuring it runs smoothly.
“Our basic rule is that a bathroom takes 15 working days from start to finish and the customer doesn’t need to worry about a thing,” he says.
“Very, very occasionally it might take 17 days if a special product is late arriving but when you have things down to a fine art, that’s unusual.”
Baker says that space considerations certainly do cause logistical challenges in bathrooms, where only a certain number of tradespeople will fit.
“But it works fine when one expert’s out and the other is ready to come in and we always have three projects on the go at any one time.”
When it comes to cost, Baker says that the average bathroom costs between $30,000 and $35,000 – that's $7000 to $14,000 more than the Block NZ's $21,000 to $28,000 spends. And big bathrooms don’t generally cost much more than smaller ones, he adds, because they all need the same basic items such as a toilet, bath and vanity, which make up a large proportion of the expenses
He says Block NZ fans who are inspired by the bathrooms on the show certainly can opt to do at least part of a new bathroom themselves, but won’t necessarily save money, and they’ll certainly have to sacrifice a lot of time.
