Comparing quotes when I'm not sure what I want

Ectophile

Fitting a new bath the opposite way round needn't be a problem. When I had my bathroom done recently, the new bath was fitted the opposite way round to the old one. The installer just extended the pipes along under the bath - no ripping up of floorboards required.

My way to keep the cost down was to make as few changes as possible - just replace tatty old fittings with new, and keep everything in the same place.

southcoastrgi

HOW MUCH !!
that is a crazy quote, I don't know where you are but if you don't go for top end stuff (most of which is over priced anyway) you should be able to do that within your budget

Snakey

Doozergirl wrote: »

Are you in London? Which bit?

It sounds to me like you do know what you want!

Paddington.

I think the trouble is that I sound like I know what I want, but really I have no clue. For all I know there's no problem at all having a shower right next to a window due to some new (or old) way of doing it that I'm unaware of - so the last thing I want is for a builder to think to himself "oh, I wonder why she isn't doing it this way?" but not say anything because hey, the woman clearly knows what she wants.

I have concrete floors so I think all the pipes live under the bath and/or are boxed off at the side of the room anyway. Presumably that makes life easier. Maybe turning the bath won't be a big deal, and there are no electrics for a shower in there yet anyway so it's no more or less effort wherever you put them.

Doozergirl

Okay. I was wondering as we're working shortly in West London. So who was it that quoted for you? Did you get as far as picking fittings or tiles, or did they put amounts for those in the budget for you?

I have to say that I agree that is very high, I'd say it was London prices but I know plenty of people out here who get quoted those sorts of anounts and pay it - for less work! I don't think your budget is unreasonable. You can certainly get past having a shower curtain!

Concrete floors might cause an additional cost for moving things if it involves digging, but it might not, and I can understand where you want the advice in this case. You need the most economical way to get the best outcome and no amount of staring at pipes is going to help you personally understand what that way might be.

Snakey

They guessed at £2.5k for fittings and £1k for tiles, excluding VAT, based on top quality shower stuff and mid-range tiles. The builder is a local guy who owns flats on the estate, which I thought would be useful as he knows what you need permission for and knows the people involved, and is (I hope) less likely to come up against unforeseen problems halfway through a job because he knows how the flats are constructed and plumbed and everything.

I need to get more quotes to see what it all averages out at, I just needed to know what to say to everyone first!

I also have my sister (nowhere near London) pushing a friend-of-a-friend on me, but if anything I'm even more nervous about that! I suppose it's the lesser of two evils: the risk that I'm being ripped off, or the risk that a cheap job will be shoddy (or that he'll run into unexpected problems and the price will shoot up) and I'll have no effective comeback.

I expect I'll look back on this in a few years' time when I've got a few completed jobs under my belt and laugh at how worked up I was getting, but it doesn't feel funny to me right now!

kirstym100

I would definitely second getting more quotes - we have had big differences in price for work to our bathroom (also needing structural work done). We've had quotes excluding materials from £7200 at one end up to £14400 at the other! Sadly our first quote was the cheapest though, and they worked up from there.

Owain_Moneysaver

Snakey wrote: »

The only thing that absolutely has to be changed is that I need the shower (and presumably this also means the taps) to be at the other end of the bath,

The usual reason for fitting the shower over the tap end is that's where the plughole is and lots of baths have non-slip dimples that end, but not at the other end where you sit.

But it's not compulsory. You can have the shower over the non-tap end if you want.

You can have surface mounted shower valves with chrome-plated piping on the surface, to save digging out walls.

The really cheap option is to use a longer shower hose (or get a coupler and join two hoses to allow you to fit the spray head where you want. You would have to use a bracket or a non-return valve to ensure the spray head can't be dropped into the bath for water hygiene regulations.

Condensation (and mould) is down to heating and ventilation; get a decent extractor fan with a built-in humidistat. Tiling all the walls will just make them run with condensation. If you have double glazing then a glazier can remove an existing sealed unit, cut a fan hole in it, seal the fan into the hole and refit the unit into the window. This may be cheaper than core drilling the wall. (It may need to be a low-voltage fan if it's right over the bath area.)

PVC wall cladding may be cheaper to install than tiles - I think it's about £16 a square meter to buy, which compares with mid-range tiling, but it goes up much quicker as it needs no grouting.

Snakey

I love this place, you guys are so helpful!

I think I'm slowly but surely getting a proper vision of what I want (the version that incorporates "what I can afford"). If I don't have to tile then that's even better - although the whole condensation thing confuses me a bit and I wish I'd paid more attention in Science back in the day. I thought that condensation running down tiles would be more straightforward to deal with (by which I mean "stop it growing mould") than condensation running down walls, on the assumption that walls are a bit porous.

On the upside, I do already have a fan thing in the window, and it has a little plastic box which I am now thinking might be some sort of humidity measurer. The downside is that when I turn it on and put my hand next to it I feel absolutely no movement of air whatsoever - it just makes a noise and (presumably) uses up my electricity. I tried it once and gave it up as a bad job (opening the window instead from then on), but now I'll find out what make it is and do some internet searching and see if I can get it sorted out.

AJMCK

Snakey - I've just had a very (very!) similar job done in my house in Z2 London. Wall removed between toilet and bathroom, new wall built to replace what was the bathroom door, bath moved to the wall so as not to be in the middle, taps switched round so as not to be at the window end, new p-bath shower installed and new sink where the bath used to be, new toilet in a like-for-like place, dual powered towel radiator and new recess lighting. The labour was ~£6k (but we got quoted double that by another guy), fittings were £1700 - bathstore so not high end but they were at nice end of their range - and tiles for £600. We saved on tiles by only tiling around the bath/shower and sink area and then had the rest painted and the effect has come out very well. So all in about £8000 for the lot.

GolfBravo

Snakey wrote: »

On the upside, I do already have a fan thing in the window, and it has a little plastic box which I am now thinking might be some sort of humidity measurer.

Is the little plastic box similar to this? A humidistat cover would have holes in it to let the air in.

Otherwise it could be a 12V transformer.