Cost of new bathroom installation - is this fair?

Hi,

we are to redo our bathroom as well.
Any suggestions as to where/websites we can look at for taps, whirlpools, showers that are good quality but very cheaply priced ?

Have had a look at ebay and some bargains to be had there.

Any suggestions welcome.

Anitha

No you are being ripped off, I went to my local Homebase store and got a very good suite and similar install for that much all in.

We recently had our bathroom, en-suite and cloakrooms replaced at a total cost of under £6000. I purchased all the materials myself -Twyfords stuff, mira sport 9.8kw electric shower, 4 bristan mixer taps including bath/shower mixer, 3 chrome towel rails, bath screen and limestone effect tiles. The rooms are fairly large and we fitted 4 500mm cut back kitchen base units with shaker style doors and laminate worktops in the bathroom and ensuite. THis was a huge saving against bathroom furniture. The £6000 includes costs of plumber, joiner, electrician, tiler, plasterer and decorator and laying of flooring.

All the materials were purchased online after leafing through brochures. The tradesmen were all known to me and had done lots of work before in our old house. Sounds horrendously expensive to me. Can you save anything by removing the old sanitryware, tiles etc. yourself?

We work in Kent, doing exactly this, but usually we supply, for very good reasons, I explain below.

To be honest the quote sounds on the high side, but not unreasonable. It may include VAT. If you need to save money you should look for a small firm 'one-man band' who is not VAT registered

Do get one or two other quotes, but don't just go by price, ask the installers to arrange to visit 1 or 2 other similar bathroom jobs.
You need to be assured of the standard of the finish, and time scale. As someone else said. It should take 2 weeks.
You also need to know what sort of follow-up guarentee you will have. If there is a leak in 10 months time will the plumber return? You may want to pay less but take care of any faults which emerge later at your own expense.

You can arrange the seperate tradesmen yourself:
plumber, tiler, plasterer, electrician if required. But this could be a nightmare and make the job take serveral weeks.
Some plumbers are multi-skilled and can do all the work themselves or bring in people they work with on a regular basis.

My company almost always supply everything. This way we can offer a guarentee. If anything turns out to be faulty - such as a shower tray cracking, or shower door breaking we can go back and fix or replace free of charge. Taps often develop faults. If your plumber has not supplied these things, he willl charge you to come back and sort it out.
These things do happen.
If you do supply everything, I would NOT buy the cheapest.

Obviously, you would pay more for our company to do the work, and sadly we are VAT registered. Typically we would charge upwards of £7k inc VAT. to supply and fit as described. Possibly a little less if there are no electrics, most bathrooms we do have new lighting.

Deb

I am in the process of completely updating our bathroom and have bought some excellent products such as butler sink, bath, WC, radiator/towel warmer etc from Ebay shops and have saved a huge amount on the costs compared with B&Q. Certainly worth a look as so much more choice than than in the shops.