Bathroom & Kitchen Refurb

SadieO

Albermarle said:

Lost count of how many toilet seats we have bought over the years, due to cheap fittings breaking.
Our bathroom fitter put in 2 new toilets in the house, and assured us the fixings would not come loose or break and they haven't !

Random fact of the day. We were in b&q over Christmas and got chatting to the woman doing the paint mixing for us. She told us that their single biggest seller in December was toilet seats! Nothing Christmassy as you might expect. I guess it's people having time off work and therefore getting round to the jobs they've been putting off, and maybe expecting visitors too.

Gavin83

F1001 said:

Re bathroom stuff - I went to a few independent stores and they have hoards of catalogues from different brands which I am looking through but everything looks the same but different - and its 1,000s of pages! Any advice on which brands are worth sifting through? I have Phoenix, Nuie, Eastbrook, Sonas, K.Vit, Aqwa, GSI, Scudo.... and im sure there's more! Overwhelmed

It depends on your budget. We've got Villeroy & Boch with Crosswater in one bathroom and Lusso in another. All 3 brands are excellent but they're not the cheapest. However ours was a DIY job so we could afford it. Had we needed a tradesperson I expect we'd have had to cut back.

twopenny

I agree it's overwhelming.
But you need measurements.
And decide what sort of look you want and how you will use both. That cuts down the choice immensely.
Otherwise they will give you what is convenient to them.
I saw some houses where they'd just taken a bunch of stuff from a showroom and it looked awful and would be a nightmare to live with.

If you are going to rent out you should get the rules and regs about what is required and to what standard.

Storage in bathroom is a plus.

F1001

Thanks @jennifernil and @Albermarle
The builder has mentioned a few issues with selecting the toilets because of the layout and pipework so I may have some limitations on which bargains I can take advantage of  
Thanks for tips on kitchens - DIY are awesome and so affordable but I would prefer to go with a company who can come round and take proper measurements so might have to be IKEA or Howdens. Builder suggested Wren over Howdens due to payment flexibility but I have heard mixed reviews?

jennifernil

Our daughter has a Howdens kitchen, not her choice but that of the previous house owner, house purchased 5 years back.   Looks nice, but so much wasted space, she would love to change it but it is still in good condition after 10 years, and the cabinets are sturdy, so she cannot justify that yet.  The plinths do however drive her mad as they keep dislodging, the joining bits just do not keep the lengths together

Whoever designed it was pretty rubbish at it, one can only assume it gave the previous owners what they wanted, and that they did not have a lot of kitchen stuff to store.   However, we did notice that they kept all their tins etc in a cupboard off the hall!

She has high ceilings and the room is large, but they only used short wall units, the corner solutions are very poor, and there is a huge island that leaves too little space around it for comfort.    

For me, a lot of the "fun" would be designing my kitchen myself, I have done a few over the years.   Measuring up is not that difficult, you just need a decent tape line, someone to hold the other end, and paper and pencil to make a sketch.  Measure everything at least twice.   Note anything that cannot be moved.......doors....windows....maybe pipes and sockets.

Lots of big drawers are better for storage than just cupboards, and avoid deep cupboards you cannot easily reach to the back of, there are lots of corner and pull-out solutions  available.  Full height shallow units offer excellent storage where there is too little space for full depth units.

My main tips would be (for a kitchen I would be using myself) ...

Fit good quality sinks and taps, at least 1 large and 1 small sink, and a drainer

 Buy good quality appliances

Get an extractor hood that vents to outside

Check the depth of the wall units, some can be too shallow to house a large dinner plate

You can never have too many drawers.

Avoid shiny stone type worktops, they show every mark, especially the dark coloured ones, likewise glossy cupboard doors, whatever the colour.

jennifernil

For the 2 bathrooms we have had replaced, we used a guy who had done a lot of work for our son and daughter, so we knew he would be good.   Our house is timber frame, so all the wall finishes had to be removed as impossible to remove the tiles without wrecking the plasterboard.  We replaced the baths, with showers over, with large shower enclosures, but nothing was moved from the original position by more than a few cms.  We also got new radiators, towel warmers and lighting.

Both bathrooms had lots of storage, custom built originally, so in our en suite we  kept the units and big mirror, but fitted new countertops, the other bathroom got everything new other than the big mirror.   Toilets are back to wall type with the cistern in a cabinet.

We used only known, mid priced brands such as Mira, Aqualisa, Ideal Standard, and have not regretted our choices.  Each bathroom    was about £8.500 in total, done in 2021 and 2022, prices of everything had shot up between the first and the second  one, but the first one was much larger.

FreeBear

jennifernil said: Check the depth of the wall units, some can be too shallow to house a large dinner plate

You can never have too many drawers.

Did away with wall units in my kitchen. It makes the space feel so much bigger, and reduces the desire to store mountains of crap. Wall units also collect piles of dust on top and never get cleaned.

Drawer line base units with a couple of decent sized pan drawers is enough for me.

jennifernil

We are all different.   I like wall units as it is easier for me to access them as our very old kitchen only has cupboards  with doors below.   We do have several pull out shelves though, and one of the tall units we re-fitted has lots of drawers in it.      I was/ am very into cooking and baking, so could not do without base units.   Our kitchen is fairly large, so wall units look OK.

F1001

Thank you so much everyone! 
I am finally going with DIY Kitchens - they were so much cheaper than Howdens and Wren and quite excited to have designed it myself online. Thank you @jennifernil for great tips! Going with a local place and some bits from Bathroom Mountain for the bathroom stuff. 

ArbitraryRandom

jennifernil said:

We are all different.   I like wall units as it is easier for me to access them as our very old kitchen only has cupboards  with doors below.   We do have several pull out shelves though, and one of the tall units we re-fitted has lots of drawers in it.      I was/ am very into cooking and baking, so could not do without base units.   Our kitchen is fairly large, so wall units look OK.

I think as you say it depends. I can't cope with tins stacked high, but I had a plate rack in my old kitchen with adjustable uprights (dowels that you could move/remove) and I loved it. When I get around to remodelling my current kitchen it's definitely going to be something I look into.