New bathroom frustrations

Doozergirl

Go for it! 

Ganga

FreeBear said:

Ganga said: went to B and Q  every morning to use their toilets

Please, not the ones out on display....

OP - I'm surprised you do not have any independent kitchen/bathroom showroom/suppliers in your town. Just about everywhere I've been had at least one such place.

No the ones in their customer toilets ,and did not feel guilty as i bought the new bits from them. 

jennifernil

We are about to get our en suite done, size is 3.6x2.1 metres, so not small.

 We are having a shower instead of the bath, but nothing is moving position.  We will however need all the walls taken down as they are plasterboard on timber frame and fully tiled, so tile removal would wreck them anyway.  Also having the ceiling down as changing all the lighting positions, plus it is Artex finish.

We have bought most of the items required,  and are using a small builder who has his own tradesmen to call on, and who has already done 4 projects for our children, including 4 bathrooms, and does a great job.

We have the shower mixer etc, shower tray, 1200x900,  enclosure with hinged door, back to wall type toilet, concealed cistern that goes inside a cabinet, inset basin for countertop (we still need to get the countertop), large electric towel warmer, new CH radiator, new downlighters, 20 sq m of tiles, and the LVT for the floor.   All decent quality well known brands.

We are reusing the bathroom furniture, as it was originally custom made for the room, the made to measure mirror with lights above, the basin tap as it is still as new, and the extractor fan and wall mounted electric heater as they were just recently replaced.

My OH will be refitting the furniture, installing the large countertop with basin, and doing the flooring himself, plus a little final tiling, but the  whole thing will still be a bit over £8k in the end, which is about £1k more for the labour and building materials than we had hoped,  but we know we will get tidy workers and a good result.

Not having had tradesmen in to do stuff in the house in over 30 years, I think we may just be a little out of touch with what things cost these days!

gozaimasu

jennifernil said:

We will however need all the walls taken down as they are plasterboard on timber frame and fully tiled, so tile removal would wreck them anyway. 

Interesting. I ripped tiles off plasterboard walls in my en-suite and they were intact.

gozaimasu

Here is the drawing of the proposed bathroom design.

https://ibb.co/2K6DFhJ

The sink is currently opposite where it is placed in the design, and the radiator is currently where the sink is. The reason for moving the sink is because it is currently in front of a window. There is a fixed internal soil stack so I'm told it isn't possible to move the toilet. My intial thought was just to move the toilet to where the sink currently is (with a flexible connector from toilet to soil stack), and have the sink where the current mirror is. The current mirror is on the wall above the toilet so your legs touch the toilet whilst using the mirror. Quite annoying.

Only concern with this proposed design is that the sink unit will probably stick out around 40cm so might impede entry from the door? Constantly banging legs into it etc?

I briefly thought about moving the bath to the same wall as the toilet but again, that would impede access to open the window. Obvisouly there is an option to keep everything in the existing layout but the sink-in-front-of-window situation is annoying.

As it happens, I was in B&Q today and noticed a sign advertising for approved installers, so it looks like they have started doing installations again! Will give them a go and hopefully get interest free credit again too.

FreeBear

gozaimasu said: There is a fixed internal soil stack so I'm told it isn't possible to move the toilet. My intial thought was just to move the toilet to where the sink currently is (with a flexible connector from toilet to soil stack)

You want to avoid using flexi connectors where ever possible - The internal ridges will collect all sorts of nasty ick, and over time, could lead to blockages. A smooth bore will have a much better flow rate which will improve your flush.

jennifernil

gozaimasu said:

jennifernil said:

We will however need all the walls taken down as they are plasterboard on timber frame and fully tiled, so tile removal would wreck them anyway. 

Interesting. I ripped tiles off plasterboard walls in my en-suite and they were intact.

I assume it would depend on how well stuck the tiles are. As we fixed the tiles ourselves, we know they are very well stuck!   There are a lot of tiles, and they are grouted with epoxy grout.

The builders have advised that the time involved in trying to remove the tiles would just add to the labour costs, and the out come for the PB would most likely not be good.

The other advantage of  replacing the walls is that we can access the electrics to make some changes, add supports to hang a much heavier towel warmer, and update to the moisture resistant type of plasterboard, or whatever is the latest requirement, which is not what we have at present.  Cannot remember what type of board they are proposing.

thegreenone

May I ask why you need to replace the bathroom after just five years?

gozaimasu

thegreenone said:

May I ask why you need to replace the bathroom after just five years?

Different property.

jennifernil said:

I assume it would depend on how well stuck the tiles are.

Fair point! The tiles I removed were not stuck in the proper way...they did those blobs on top of creating the grooves with the tile float.

FreeBear said:

You want to avoid using flexi connectors where ever possible - The internal ridges will collect all sorts of nasty ick, and over time, could lead to blockages. A smooth bore will have a much better flow rate which will improve your flush.

The toilet will stay where it is so I'll have to work the layout around it which means moving bath/radiator/sink. Does anyone see a problem with moving the pipework for sink/radiator? Gravity fed system but the cold water tap comes from the mains. Cold bath tap comes from loft, very poor flow compared to the hot water.