Bathroom renovation quotes - going rate or not?

Arfa__

I'm planning a bathroom renovation and am in the process of getting a few quotes. So far they've been coming back a bit higher than I initially expected, so I'd like a second opinion if they're in the right ball park or not. I'm in East London and just picking people of Trustatrader who have good ratings and will manage the whole project.

Bathroom is small, 1700x1700mm, in pretty poor condition and has had water ingress damage around bath. Work needed includes:

• Rip existing bathroom out, remove all tiles (all walls floor to ceiling) and plaster. Removal of some legacy steel pipework.
  
• Replacement of floorboards (suspended floor) with ply and tiles.
• Re-plaster (or bonding), fresh tiles
• Skim and paint ceiling and fit new light
• Swap electric shower for external mixer shower off Combi boiler (new hot water pipe run)
• Fit new bathroom suite (bath, basin, loo, taps, shower screen etc)
• Fit electric towel rail

So far I've been quoted between 7-10 days work. Quote 1 is ~£3.5k labour + all materials. Quote 2 is ~£5.2k + tiles/bath suite. Still awaiting detailed breakdown from them, and some other quotes. Nonetheless, do these seem fair prices for this work?

Thanks!

Ant555

im currently getting quotes for similar (remarkably similar including the water damage!)
a couple of general quotes last year when we could visit a showroom were ballpark 3,5k parts and 3.5k labour to 4.5k labour 4k parts.   im waiting for a local trusted tradesman to come and quote at the appropriate time though.  told to expect 2 weeks/10 days but would have working loo and water at the end of each day (not necessarily a shower though)
hope this helps.

starving_artist

Had my bathroom refurbed last year.  Similar size, scope of work to yours, in London.  Quotes ranged from £6k to £11,000 labour only.  Cheapest quotes were from builders on Trusted Trader websites.  They all expected it to take at least 2 weeks.  In the end it took a lot longer partly because it was done in conjunction with the kitchen.  Not fun if it is your only bathroom even if you have a working loo and water.

joebob

Had ours done last year had three quotes ranging from £3,200 £3,500 and £4,000 for labour we went with £3,500 quote mainly because he had been recommended and we saw his work which is always a good idea, was very satisfied .

Gunner276

I got quotes to renovate my bathroom last year. Full re-tile, vinyl floor etc. Prices quoted were around £5k.

Ended up doing the bulk of the work myself, and got a tiler in to do the tiling, ended up costing around £2.5k all in.

twopenny

That's quite a bit of work and you have electrics, plumbing, joinery and tiling so it sounds reasonable.

The £3.5 sounds a bit low for all that. Would want to know why. Does it include disposal of the old stuff?

But  the £5,000 sounds about right.

Oh and go through local recommendation. Look who's working in the area, what vans you see rather than a website that can be manipulated or paid for entry

Runningfast

Seems about right.  My mother had her bathroom completely renovated in autumn 2019 (slightly bigger than yours cost about £5k labour, electrics, parts, disposal (registered waste carriers) etc..

FaceHead

Have you considered doing any of it yourself? You can rip out the old bathroom suite , tiles etc and get something like a hippo bag to get rid of it.

I'm reading this thread thinking everyone's quotes are mad high, but then I realise I ripped everything out, did the lighting and extractor fan, had a plasterer in, had a plumber come fit the bathroom suite, fitted the underfloor heating and tiled it over (with the tiling supervision of the old man). 

For the simple stuff like the rip out, you might find it economical to take a couple of days off work, rather than pay someone else to do it with money you had to pay tax on. 

Rosa_Damascena

Runningfast said:

Seems about right.  My mother had her bathroom completely renovated in autumn 2019 (slightly bigger than yours cost about £5k labour, electrics, parts, disposal (registered waste carriers) etc..

And mine, £5.3k plus VAT to strip and re-build from scratch. Of course when you add the costs in the sky's the limit - mine came to just under £10k each.

princeofpounds

Agree that 3.5k sounds cheap. Near the M25 I was getting ~5-6k quotes for a slightly bigger room.

7-10 days doesn't sound realistic to me. It may be 7-10 days of labour, but it can be spread over weeks. Things like plaster drying, trades not coming in for a half day if the preceding trade finishes up early afternoon, the odd missed day here or there.

Sounds like it's a similar experience to some others here.

Arfa__

Cool, thanks for all the responses. Quote 1 has refined and finalised at £3850 after subsequent visits with their plumber and electrician. So seems in the right ballpark.

Overall timeline is a little worrying, as there's 4 of us in the house and its the only bathroom! They are promising to reinstate the loo during the work. Guess, there's not a lot else that can be done about that. :-(