Can't make my mind up on Bathroom - DIY or professionals?

helping_hubby

Oh wow....there you are! I'm very impressed! I absolutely love the huge mirror. Love your shower head...makes me regret my decision a bit.

Your layout is the same as ours. Our door is in the same place too. Ours won't be as finished though as we'll still need to do the ceiling.

Oooh noticed your bath panel...it's tiled That's ideally how I want mine. Do you know how they made it? Is it removable? We'll have to make our own due to funds. Worst case we'll make one out of tongue and grove and paint it white for now.

Phirefly

Thanks, ladies. I'm over the moon with it.

Apologies for the poor formatting below - tab doesn't seem to work on here. I was going to do some comparative RRPs, but prices are so fluid, it would be hard to be exact. Suffice to say, pretty much everything except the wall tiles, Screwfix purchases and the John Lewis goodies were around 50% cheaper, (sometimes even cheaper than that) than had we got an off-the-peg jobby.


Toilet (ebay) £155 collected
Basin (QS supplies Leics) £139.49 collected
Bath (bathrooms at crazyprices.com) £129 incl delivery
Taps (Homesupply) £214.02 incl delivery
Wall tiles (East Mids Ceramics) £312.64 incl delivery
Floor tiles (Marble Mosaics, ebay) £50.00 collected
Shower Valve (1/2 price bathrooms, ebay) £84.99 incl delivery
Shower head (dotcombathrooms, ebay) £30.00 incl delivery
Towel warmer (dotcombathrooms, ebay) £160.00 incl delivery
Mirror (Give Us A Break, Leics) £83.00 collected
Lights (screwfix) £82.44 collected
Switches (screwfix) £31.48 collected
Extractor (screwfix) £12.99 collected
Bath waste (screwfix) £24.99 collected
Bottle trap (ebay) £13.00 incl delivery
Shelf (John Lewis) £65.00 collected
Laundry basket (John Lewis) £60.00 incl delivery
Loo roll holder (ebay) £6.49 incl delivery
Paint & decoration £20.00
Storage & Sundries £26.00

Total fixtures & fittings £1700.53

Labour
Original quote £2200.00
Additional charges for:
Wiring electric element for towel warmer
Bath panel frame & tiling
Install mirror
Additional materials £150.00

Total labour £2350.00

Grand total £4050.53

TomsMom

Veeeeeeery nice phirefly. I love the big wall tiles. Thanks for sharing. I'm impressed with the prices you've paid for a lot of your items. Well done.

Helping_hubby ... someone posted this link on a thread recently to do with access and a tiled bath panel. It might be of interest to you.

Phirefly

helping_hubby wrote: »

Oooh noticed your bath panel...it's tiled That's ideally how I want mine. Do you know how they made it? Is it removable? We'll have to make our own due to funds. Worst case we'll make one out of tongue and grove and paint it white for now.

The bath panel was fun and games. I had not wanted a fully tiled one in case we needed to access the plumbing for whatever reason, so opted for an gloss acrylic panel. Problem was, the bath is unusually high at 580mm, and most bath panels - including the one I'd bought - are 510mm. Cue amusing scenes of Phirefly to-ing and fro-ing up and down the A6 in the tiny phiremobile with a bath panel disecting the length of the car, basset looking all bemused in the passenger seat and quite a severe blind spot on my offside!

Our only options were to buy a special panel at around the £100 mark, or have it tiled in. Mr P had wanted it tiled from the start so heaped the pressure on, and the fitter had said if we saved a couple of tiles, if we needed access later, he'd be able to chip off a couple of tiles and make good after. I had about 20 minutes to make a decision so just said s*d it - tile it. And even though I'm a bit nervous that we may regret it one day should we have an access headache, it certainly looks the business.

The fitter charged £150 for extras, as detailed above, and i'd say about £60 of this was related to the bath panel.

Phirefly

andrew-b wrote: »

So what room is next ?

Kitchen *gulp* :eek:

helping_hubby

Phirefly wrote: »

Kitchen *gulp* :eek:

Oh cool. When does the Kitchen thread start then?! You should join the house renovation thread and make a blog. We all love being nosey over there.

Phirefly

Well the kitchen is actually more dire than the bathroom was. Our cold tap hasn't worked for almost a year now (its amazing what you get used to) so we have to switch the hot water off at the boiler if we want cold, the grill & extractor haven't worked for years. This wouldn't be such a problem were it not for Mr P being really into cooking, he cooks meals from scratch most days. On top of all that, we now have a gaping hole in the boxing-in under the counter where the soil pipe was rerouted. The only reason we did the bathroom first was because the bath had started leaking (well, gushing) and it became more urgent.

But all that said, I'm going to see how my new contract works out (I'm self-employed) before I commit any more of my rainy-day funds to home improvement.

I'm anticipating we can do the kitchen on a much tighter budget. Mr P used to be a kitchen planner and has loads more contacts in cabinetry and kitchens than we had for the bathroom. I also think chucking a few cabinets together is more within his remit than the intricacies of a bathroom refit. I'm going to try to be less precious about the design/finish of the kitchen as I was with the bathroom as cooking is His department, and I see the bathroom as an extention of my workspace as I work from home. Andy's right though, it'll be a bucket in the garden for washing up when we do it - no greasy pans are going near my lovely new bathroom!

brownbake

Great job Phirefly!! Looks great.

I see you went for the shower curtain on the bath - which I wanted but the OH wanted as it would look better. Wish I had stuck to my guns. Complete PITA - not even sure if that is an accepted Internet acronym - but should be!

I know I posted all my costs, trials and tribulations and pics on one of these boards a long time ago.

All I can say is I learnt, expensively, from all my mistakes and I won't make them again.

BTW have you got a combi boiler to be running that shower or a pump? Sorry no time to go through all posts.

Also wanted to say that obviously different areas of the country charge different things for labour. A lot of Scottish people seem to get a bathroom supplied, tiled and fitted for £500. The great North South divide eh?!! If they just moved the price of labour down to the standard of living everyone would be happy.

brownbake

Have you got the lights on a dimmer as that is one thing I would do next time? Also have you got a shave socket - which in my case would be predominantly for tootbrushes.

Dimmer - or different lights
Shaver socket
And lots of storage - for cleaning bits etc

Would be my "next time requirements"

Got any to add or is this your perfect bathroom with everything taken into consideration?

Phirefly

The shower curtain was another bone of contention.

In an ideal world I'd have a separate shower cubicle so there would be no need for either screen nor curtain. I think both options are a bit of a compromise.

Mr P. had always wanted a screen but I overruled him for a curtain, until we watched that 'home' show on C4 where George Clark put forward a convincing argument against them, and I set about finding a screen (halfway through the fit). Most bath screens are hideously ugly, it was very hard to find a simple, framless one that wasn't curved for less than £200. The only one I could find that fit the bill was 800mm wide, but it was only £80 so I ordered it.

It was excellent quality (www.primrosebathrooms.co.uk) but it completely overpowered the bathroom, it came out to half the length of the bath, leaving only a foot of space to the basin. It was hinged, so you could still get in and out of the bath, but it just looked all wrong, especially with the bath taps centrallised as they are. So in the end we had to compromise and get a curtain, at least it can be cheaply replaced, and I got a really heavy waffle cotton one that looks in keeping. Also, we had a screen before (as you can see from the pics, lovely isn't it) which was a b*gger to keep looking smear and drip free.

So did you go for a screen in the end? Its not completely clear from your post, what do you make of it?

As far as storage goes - we're still looking for a cabinet to go above the loo. We have a dimmer - our fitter insisted on the highest quality lights and switches, and the dimmer is the best I've seen, not a flicker once. I didn't bother with a shaving socket as I keep my toothbrush on charge in the bedroom which isn't really a hardship.

The one weak spot is the handheld shower, as they're prone to leaking. The only other option is an enclosed-tube hose one which collects the drips, but then you have the problem of it going stagnant. We put it as far away from the shower as possible and it will rarely be used, just to clean the bath and the dog occasionally so as long as we're careful it should be ok.

All in all its pretty much ideal given the restrictions of the room. A bigger bath would have been nice, but there's just not the space.