Bathroom installation advice.

wyrleyite

We decided to have a new bathroom (new suite, tiling, removing radiator and having a towel radiator fitted on another wall) and need some advice.

Initially I had decided to do the tiling myself (never done it before:eek: ) and get blokes in to do the rest, ie remove old tiles myself, get plasterer in to skim walls and ceiling, get new suite fitted by plumber, tile it myself and then get plumber back in to fit towel radiator. In that order.

Now having looked into it a bit more the logisitics of it all, getting people in and what not, is giving me a headache.

Am I better off getting someone in to do the lot for example B&Qs service and paying the extra or am I going to save quite a bit sticking to my initial plan. Anyone else had a similar experience?

weekendwarrior

It's difficult to do because you need to remove the toilet and basin to tile behind it and so if you don't know how to do this then it is extremely difficult.

I would not use B&Q to be honest as you are paying a middle man then.

You will obviously save money if you can do some of this yourself.

Take a look here- http://www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk/index.htm

and click on A-Z contents,

then look at the following links-

toilet removal
toilet fitting
tap fitting
basin removal
basin fitting
radiator removal
towel radiator fitting
tile removal
tiling

Sorry I didn't have time to post the links directly, but they are easy to find in the contents section. It could save you quite a lot of money if you can do some of the work yourself.

stan747

i completely refurbed our bathroom about 18 months ago, 1st time i had done a bathroom and was a bit more work than i anticipated, when i ripped the old suite out, some of the floorboards where knackered so i replaced them, put in a false ceiling to accomodate shower light/extractors and retiled floor-ceiling (was only half tiled before). just needed a bit of touch up plastering after removing the old tiles, doesn't have to be a good job because you will only knacker it again when you replace the new tiles.
tiling is easy, just a matter of taking your time, get one of the electric tile cutters (bout £25 each) made the job much easier, keep a spirit level and plum line handy to keep yourself on track, make sure you start off with straight lines and keep to them.tile spacers are only pennies and are essential and you can manipulate them to keep your lines straight.
i tore out all the plumbing as some items where being moved, and put in all new pipes with valves positioned at all supply points, the toilet was dead easy, just a push fitting for the cell and i used a flexi pipe as the new toilet was in a slightly different position, used flexible supply hoses for the toilet and all taps so it allowed for a little flexibility when fitting. we had new boiler and radiators fitted the week before so all i did with the radiator was take it off and tile behind it and replace the pipes and valves with chrome ones.
all in all it wasn't a difficult job, just messy and time consuming as i did it all myself and kicked the oh to spain for a week while i did it.

ormus

you really shouldnt need a plasterer if you are tiling. use PB or aquapanel if the walls are really bad.
PB the ceiling (if required) is simple enough.
small patches are easy enough to fill or plaster for the average diyer.
even fitting the actual suite is not that hard these days with modern plumbing fittings.

and i would never pay the likes of BQ etc.. just paying for middle men.
get a local builder/plumber instead. make sure you use a recommended one.
dont just pick a name out of the yellow pages!