Apart from two minor bits of work I consider the bathroom done. Here's an update of the most recent work and a few pictures.

(The todo bits: grouting the one line between top of the tiles and the cornice in white and sanding+repainting the window frame.)

Last weekend I finished the tiling and grouted walls and floor. While the actual grouting wasn't too bad, the cleanup afterwards absolutely sucked. Grout haze removal is a pain, even if you do like I did and leave very very little mess on the tiles in the first place.

As you can see on the photos above, I have no sunken arches (but a bent back after all that crouched-down work).

And as expected cleaning the big tiles wasn't an issue but the small ornamental strip was a pain: all but the small white tiles have matt surfaces (or shiny in case of the black mosaic tiles). Those white tiles are...well, heavily textured seems to be the appropriate term. And just like in the kitchen the textured nature of these makes the grout stick really really well. Picture me cursing a lot.

So I slaved away a very long time with this cleanup: dry cloth, vinegar/floorcleaner/water mix, dedicated grout cleaner and then I even resorted to the Brute Force Tool of Floor Cleaning: my (self-imported) supercoarse scrubbing brush. In the end I decided to call the result 'good enough'.

As you can see above the bath also got a new light (wasteful but nice-looking and very cheap: 5x35W GU10 halogen, $45 or so complete. Ikea), and of course a clean but bare bathroom isn't much use without some washbasin. Mirror cabinets are quite handy, too.

To mount these I had to drill the tiles...another trip to Bunnings, because my normal masonry drill bits combined with my non-pneumatic hammer drill just didn't cut it with the hard porcelain tiles. $20 later I now have a set of glass/tile tungsten-tipped bits which at least manage the job.

Before that I also had to silicone the wall/floor joints up (no grout there). That was actually less horrible than expected, because I had wisely invested huge amounts of money ($2.90) into a set of Cool Tools For Goop.

These scrapers are made from silicone (ashes to ashes, dust to dust and silicone to...silicone), slightly bendable, and work really really well for creating decent, mess-free silicone lines and joints.

And today I delivered the coup-de-grace: the shower screen (and sundry further fixes).

Nice shower, certainly worth the $450 (plus $100 freight) - came complete with all the goodies, handles, the magnet seals and so forth. And not even overly hard to install (after you have managed to drill another eight holes through your hard tiles).

The wall opposite to the washbasin/shower got my old towel cantilever fixed, this time in a position that cannot interfere with the door. And because the new shower takes up a few centimetres less space and has a corner entry I decided to put the storage cupboard between the door and the shower, where it fits very precisely.

Net result: see below. Not bad I think. (Apart from a few minor imperfect spots it's as good as I can make it, and so it meets my 'Good Enough' criteria: a balance of money, effort and time I spent versus the quality of the result.)

(apropos sick-of-renovations: my next task, soon to be tackled, is to replace the tiles and the toilet in the toilet. It'll be a piece of cake compared to the bath.)