Bathroom / Toilet Quotes

ukjoel

I think that bathrooms are one of the few rooms in the house that are critical and need to be available 24/7.
I had a really bad experience with a fitter last time and ended up in court (which I won) but its taught me a serious lesson.
I think that due to the variety of jobs involved in a bathroom or kitchen ie plumbing, electrics, tiling, painting, plastering etc causes a lot of plumbers to think I dont want that job. They are quite happy to do the plumbing but while competent to do the other jobs they dont enjoy them and they take them twice as long as they would take a tiling or plastering professional.
They calculate their hourly rate based on plumbing work (£30-£40+ per hour) and you get a silly quote.
However if they are short of work and needs a weeks work they are far more sensible with the price.

The other point I would make is getting more than one person in to do a room is often tricky unless you ask plumber to reccomend a tiler as otherwise they blame each other for everything that goes wrong.

YOUNGE1

Sympathies and empathy with above. I know what you're going through. Plasterer has let us down now, so have spent the day with hubby chiseling off tile adhesive. Have to buy more tiles now, as had planned to paint. If they are delivered in time, tiler agrees to tile whole bathroom now, so may work out ok.

Never again!

P.S Happy new year! Hope our new bathrooms work out in 2008!!!!!!!!!!!

brownbake

I had my bathroom ripped out and reinstalled in Feb 2007. It is a 2 bed flat with a nice original 70's bathroom suite. The room is 2.5 x 2 metres.

I needed it stripped and cleared including the part tiled walls. New suite installed including wall hung basin and toilet. Pipes had to be chopped in to accomodate basin. Fully tiled walls and floors. Pump fitted to boost hot water - low pressure system. Towel rad, door rehung and suspended ceiling with downlights.

I paid £3300 for all this work and the plumbers did all the work. It took them 7 full days. From this experience I would suggest getting different trades people in because plumbers are not tilers etc. However I know that this can be difficult to organise lots of different trades coming at different times.

You can get a plain white suite from B&Q or Wickes for about £250 so for a simple update or refurb this may be OK.

I sourced all my products myself and I got quality parts that will "hopefully" last. I got Bristan taps off Ebay for £130 - bath shower mixer and basin tap, all new that would have cost around £350 online. They are supposed to have a 5 year guarantee but I am not sure if this would be honoured because I suspect that because they were off Ebay they would say that they were "2nd hand"!

Anyway I got all my tiles for wall and floor for £270 from Right Price Tiles - would have cost near on a grand from B&Q.

I got my chrome towel rad - Gloworm - from Plumbworld. £75

Bathscreen - £100 - Primrose bathrooms off Ebay. Large bevelled edge mirror £44 off Plumbworld.

My wall hung back to wall Roca toilet full kit £140 delivered off Ebay.

Wall hung Roca basin - £100 and my Roca bath £144 from City Plumbing.

I would recommend getting "BRANDED" goods. The plumber suggested Roca - if you have been to a hotel in Europe most of their bathrooms are Roca but you may have seen Twyfords - Armitage Grohe etc.

Sorry that I am rambling - just trying to pass on my experience!

All my parts, suite, taps, tiles, towel rail, accessories came to about £1300 and yes I paid quite a lot to get the job done - but the difference is great and it can only have added value to my property. The tiles are neutral natural tones, I would avoid fancy individual tiles unless you don't plan on ever moving in the future. Also I avoided using white tiles which whilst being light and bright can look stark on their own and tend to show up dirt so you have to keep it scrupulously clean. But my Mum did her bathroom in white with a detail border and does look nice.

Hope this helps in some way and apologies if I went off topic too much!!

brownbake

Forgot to mention - my plumber offered to supply the suite so I asked him to quote - he quoted me £600 for a Roca bath and £300 for a wall hung basin so I made quite a saving getting them myself for £250 for both!!

A tip at City Plumbing - ASK FOR A DISCOUNT!!! I offered to pay cash and I think they knocked off about 20 % from the advertised prices. That was a tip from another plumber who quoted me and it worked - they want your business.

Also if you go about sourcing everything yourself be absolutely certain of dimensions compatability and when things are going to be delivered - you do not want to be waiting round for things when your plumber turns up. Get your plumber to check everything that does arrive.

cheekyweegit

Hello Everyone paricularly cazziebo and YOUNG1

I just thought given our trials and tribulations regarding our bathrooms since Christmas I'd give you an update on what's happened to me since my last post.

Well my tiler / fitter phoned me when he got back from holiday full of apologies about what had happened. He had heard from his other tiler who was going to finish the tiling for him whilst he was away but I couldn't let him due to the leak.

He came up to see me literally cap in hand, again apologising for what had happened and said that he would put everything right free of charge and any other tiling work I wanted done at a discount.

I was suspicious obviously, but give him his due, he organised another plumber and a sparky to fit a water pump to my system as my water pressure was too low for the taps I had. (I did pay for the pump, plumber there and sparky as it was not his fault my water pressure was too low).

To cut a long story short he has not long left and I have to say he has made a beautiful job of my bathroom. There is a couple of things left to do, like put up my shower rail and bathroom fittings, but that's incidental. It really is beautiful what he has done.

The big question to most folks would be would I use him again or recommend him? Yes I would actually. He made a mistake, he owned up to it which a lot of tradesmen wouldn't do. He contacted me as soon as he found out what had happened and sorted things out at his expense. A big thumbs up to him for his honesty. Then am I happy with the finished work? Most definitely, a very well done professional job at a very reasonable price.

Hows everyone else getting on with theirs?


Oh and brownbake I'd second what you say about sourcing your own products. My whole bathroom suite, 1900mm bath, sink, pedestal, toilet, sink taps (mono swan neck tap) and waterfall system taps for the bath which has a separate shower head cost just a tad over £500 including delivery online. Oh it also came with the bath end and front panels which cost over £100 on their own for the size I wanted. Oh I also got a bathroom accessory set thrown in as a freebe worth £99 and I've priced something similar in B&Q and it would probably cost more than the £99 to buy.

The sink tap alone is selling for £130 in homebase and my waterfall system taps apparently retail around £250 so a considerable saving was had.

My tiles were from a tile retailler on ebay who was absolutely fantastic from the minute I won the bid (£102+£40 delivery for 21square meters of 40x40cm floor tiles which I put on the wall). (seller bargainlotsuk)

The heated towel rail was from ebay too for £46 including delivery, the valves were £10 from ebay again. (Trueshopping for both).

Oh my shower is £200 in B&Q for a Twin Thermostatic Shower Valve Traditional Riser Kit. I paid £112 from the seller above on ebay including delivery.

Floor tiles were from Homebase at £7 a square meter (now reduced to £5 :mad:)

The shower pump was £138 including VAT from City Plumbing (local shop)

Finally I was about £200 probably a bit less for the things like the adhesive, piping and incidentals for the fitting of the suite and tiles.

The bath suite was this Wales deluxe suite from http://www.the-direct-group.co.uk/cgi-bin/products.cgi?fa=display&id=450&cmpid=30

(The price of the suite has gone up £100 since I got mine back in November but I still think the price is cheap for what you get.

All in all I reckon my bathroom cost £1500 to do up doing it myself. I was quoted by one of the big bathroom companies £10 - £12k for the same job.:eek::eek::eek:

It just goes to show you what shopping around can do yourself. Thankfully it will be a long time before I do it again if at all!

Hope everyone is well and celebrating by having a long soak in the bath with some free or very cheap radox compliments of Mr T!