Bathroom refurb for cheap as poss (money saving)

fimonkey

I am new to all this and have no DIY skills whatsoever, don't even watch the property programs on TV.

I desperately need a new bathroom in my new flat, it is a relatively small bathroom, bath toilet sink and small radiator currently there (in a rather fetching lime green 70's retro style).

I have a couple fo plumbers coming to quote, but just wonder what I should expect in advance?

Unfortunately my funds are extremely limited so I am hoping to source materials as cheaply as possible (I already have the bath, and bidding for sink, pedestal and toilet on ebay, have budgeted £100 for these).

For materials, apart from the suite other things I could source myself are:
- taps,
- shower head (already have a pump but that would need moving as the bath is a freestanding rolltop bath).
- towel rail
- shower rail (for the shower curtain)
- floor tiles
-wall tiles
-toilet seat

Would it be significantly cheaper for me to buy these from ebay, or use my homebase 25% off voucher, or could the plumbers get the equipment cheaper?

What else should I be looking at? In terms of pipes and fittings etc I would kinda expect the plumber to supply these. The sink needs moving to another wall - and the taps on the new bath are in a different place to the old bath.
Also, in an ideal world I'd LOVE one of those bucket shower heads coming out of the ceiling, but I expect that would be mega bucks if it means laying water pipes in the loft?

- I'm sure there'ssomething I've missed, can anyone help? I wondered perhaps if there was an existing spreadsheet detailing what is needed in a bathroom refurb so you can enter the figures and cost it?

Thanks indeed for any replies

LEJC

I have just had a full bathroom refit.....basically we moved a bathroom from downstairs to up...so everything was required new including all pipework etc....

The total refit came in at £4000 that included

3 piece bathroom suite with steel bath,with shower over bath and bathscreen,fully tiled walls with mosaic accent boarder radiator and vinyl flooring...

In the past we have had fit only quotes whereby we supply the materials and they are fitted for us....these quotes usually come in at around £1500

I think before you go buying too much of your own stuff, get a couple of quotes for supply and fit and fit only...some local builders/plummers have access to really reasonable materials which can and will reduce the cost of some of your major items....we used a builder who used a company called stax,who have limited outlets actross the country for trade only and certainly all the bits bought there were substantially less in cost than the major diy chains.

One thing you may find is that a plummer/builder will either want you to supply everything or nothing....some for example may be wary of fitting something that they feel may not be of good standard or of a standard to refelect back on them positively..
As an example We wanted contract vinyl flooring in our bathroom,which I managed to source an off cut for on ebay for next to nothing in cost...only for our builder to refuse to fit it because he had never laid that type of thing before,was frightened of messing it up and consequently having to purchase a replacment at full price!!!

You may need to consider skimming the walls of your bathroom after the old comes out and the new goes in,all depends what the quality of the walls are like...that may mean you need a plastererwhich you will need to factor into the budget...plastereras usually cost around £150 per day and its maybe a day or 2s work ...plus materials

Do you have tiles on the floor now...if so it probably means your floor is strong enough to support them so it just a case of removing them prepping the area and laying new...if not and you hav vinyl flooring then in order for the floor to support the weight of the tiles it will need to be boarded out first...this could add a few hundred pounds to the bill.

Tiles...these can work out expensive if you cant fit them yourself...its probably the one area in our house refurb that we spent quite a bit of budget on...we chose reasonable basic white tiles from topps tiles at about £13 per sqm but once you add the costs of grout adesive,edging and fitting the cost really does mount up.

I would hang fire on things like a loo seat...most standard tiolets do come with one....so if you are looking at reducing costs I wouldnt rush in to buy another until the other one needs replacing

Towel rail...are you planning on a heated one?....if you have a radiator currently and the room is small you probably dont really need one ...it wont supply enough heat to warm the room ,mearly dry damp towels and in honesty you can probably get an adaptor to sit over your radiator to hang the towels on.
One thing you might want to consider is a shower screen...far better in my opinion then a curtain!!...but I understand if thats personal preference!!!!

Other things you need to consider is paint for areas like skirting boards if you have them,door frames and door and ceiling and any of the walls space that is left untiled...its not a huge amount maybe £50 but it will all add to the cost.....
Lighting...do you need a new light or os the old one going back in?

Without seeing the room...its very difficult to estimate the cost and it can change significantly by just choosing more expensive fixtures etc...but I would guess that your starting price will be around the £2000 mark if you intend to bring in tradesmen to do the job .

fimonkey

wow, thanks indeed some really useful info in there. Shame I have to use tradesmen for everything, even if I had DIY skills I wouldn't have the time to do it.

Thanks again

Happy-Days_3

The problem with doing somethign like this on the cheap is that a lot of the cost is labour.

It may be as much as £3k labour and then as much as you like on tiles and the suite.

If you want to keep the cost down - don't move the locaiton of any items - that way no new plumbing, just attaching the new items to existing pipework. No new electricals (then don't need a spark) Also, keep tiling to a minimum.

But get a split on your quotes between labour and parts. Chances are a bathroom that costs £2k to install and cost £500 for the suite will look a heck of a lot worse than one installed for £2k and spent £1k on the suite, but the price difference isn't actually that much.

NVRAM

Were currently looking at similar..

New Bathroom suite looks to be coming in ata round 4-600.
As for the plumbing in the bathroom me and the missus' dad are gonna do that ourselves. The current walls are fully tiled from floor to ceiling, rather than remove the tiles then sort the walls out were juts gonna pull the walls down and reboard.

southcoastrgi

£100 for a cheap basin & loo on ebay you could have gone to b&q & bought their cheapo stuff for that without all the faff

natnhay

If your replacing your shower dont buy Creda, Having problems with mine after 2 weeks of use, and still waiting for repair 4 weeks on.Engineer been out once didnt bring the correct part.

Swipe

I had a bathroom upgrade which included new bath, pedestal and toilet, new taps and flexible hoses for around £600 inc labour. He also put me some new kitchen sink taps on too. It took my plumber 2 full days. On the bill he charged £125 per day labour.