I need to do up my bathroom and I'm not sure if my budget is realistic. Views or suggestions please

[wonkytonkwoman]

1980s semi house, it's my downsize to enable me to consider retirement in the next two years or so. I have a bit of money left over from my last house sale and some capacity to save monthly.

The only room that needs serious attention is the small, functioning but really tired bathroom. It needs everything, including a replacement window which I've already ordered and I'm waiting for a quote to replace the radiator which is working fine but it's one of the older style and the rest of the house had all the others replaced.

I plucked a figure out of the air - £2000 to do the above (excluding the window and rad). This would need to include getting someone in to do it, and someone is coming this afternoon to have a look. I haven't asked a bathroom specialist as my experience has been they're usually very expensive.

I know it's all subjective - I'm not looking for swanky, just clean, modern well designed stuff.

Am I realistic, do you think?

Get a builder to quote. They do the hard work and employ a plumber to check the fixings and sign off - much cheaper

We did toilet £80, bath shower screen and panel £200 (online) shower £100 sink eBay £50 tap £35 we didn’t need a cupboard.
DH removed old tiles. Tiles were £150 online retailer sale - tiler £450 large bathroom though!

Builder £700 plumber £200

We also had an expensive mirror! But could’ve got that cheaper

@GreenTulips that's cheered me up!!

I would say double it - ours (for a small bathroom) was 5k but that included putting in a new ceiling and lights and taking out a cupboard and building a new wall, as well as the full suite, panelling, tiling, shower etc.

Don't buy the cheapest bathroom stuff (bathrooms etc, Victoria plumbing) as it's a false economy. A good plumber will be able to get you a trade discount from proper suppliers.

eBay and schlock etc for your bathroom suite etc and tiles.

Shop around for a plumber and tiler.

My bath was brand new and was from someone who had bought a bath then decided to go with shower only.
£60. Same with toilet.
Washbasin and vanity unit were heavily discounted.

Tiles were also eBay. Just waited a few weeks of looking until some I liked popped up that had plenty to do the whole bathroom.

Think in total we did it for sub £500 but that is because we did a lot of the work ourselves

£2k-£2.5 should be fine, if you're not moving any plumbing. You can get a good bathroom suit including separate shower including all the plumbing bits for about £800-£1000. Ive done this 3 times in the last 4 years and its always cost less than £800. Shop around ask for discounts, try your local builders merchant, although other places are fine especially if theres a sale on. Be clear that you're not spending a lot of money.

It should only be a 3 day job to take a bathroom out and put a new one in. No more than £1000 for labour.

Tiles can cost the earth or be very reasonable, Ive usually spent about £100 and then its been about £200 to stick them on. I use a specialist tiler.

Flooring I have lino and thats usually about £120-£150 fitted.

If you can avoid a skip by taking the old bathroom to the tip (saw the bath in half to get it in the car). Some areas you have to pay to dispose of the loo and basin because its rubble but its usually no more than £20. That will save over £300.

Keep any old copper or lead pipe and weigh it in at the scrap yard, its £3 a kilo at the moment but you need photo id and bank details because they don't pay cash.

Agree don’t bother with Victoria Plumb

We bought the toilet seat from them.

We measured it and found one on line
When it came it didn’t measure the Salam’s as advertised

Rang them and was told that there version of 30cm was 27cm

They refunded our money and didn’t even wait for the seat to be sent back

I bought a 10mm bath and bought quality but not expensive items. Taps again were middling price and quality. If you go to a builders merchant they don't generally sell crap because people will take it back even a year or so later.

If the items are white they’ll match so you can get stuff from different shops.

You find X shop has a bargain bath but expensive toilet and Y shop has a great deal in cupboard but the bath is expensive

The one we got from a plumbers merchant was X3 the price in the usual diy shop

My plumber charged 1.5k to fit, but I'd used the same layout. The rest is entirely up to you on how fancy to go with the actual items. The range is £ to ££££££££.
But dont scrimp. Once a bathroom is done it should be ok for many years.

Double it and then some. A tiny tiny bathroom, literally the smallest possible space for a shower toilet and sink cost £5k. We chose large but not cheap tiles, but didn’t need many of them and were in north london though. I’d say don’t skrimp too too much I think it’s one area of the house that you can instantly tell.

I was surprised how "cheap" (relatively) bathrooms are when we did our two small bathrooms up. But it's not the cost of materials and fittings, it's the labour costs. I think we paid (central London) about £1.6k for each one (all fittings, tiles flooring, decorating materials) but about the same again or slightly more for fitting. And I was told that was on the cheap side.

OP even if you don't need to "replace" any of the plumbing you may well find that your new sink/ unit, bath, shower etc is slightly different to your existing stuff (I mean in terms of the position of pipes etc). That can cause a lot of work to adjust/ allow for. It's definitely labour where the biggest cost is.

My partner did ours if you don't need plumbing ect done then can you look at a handy man to box in your sink & toilet pipes ect.

We spent £300 on a new 1400 bath to have that extra 30cm space!
150 on a vanity sink
Toilet was fine didn't replace this
80 raidiator
200 new shower
80 shower screen
160 for wall panels / cladding + 40 for trims
60 for the floor
Taps were 50 for sink & 120 for bath
80 for new cabinet

It's nothing fancy just standard white glossy stuff all bought from Homebase/wickes/b&q but it beats the green tiles and orange floor with purple walls we had when we moved in!

We bought it over a few months and he did it over 3 months bit by bit.

I think if you was paying a handy man to do the odd jobs you could easily source labour for under £1000. It's when you look at one person for one job done in a weeks work that the price sky rockets.

It's up to you but i personally think it's doable on your budget if your not requiring a whole new range of top end furniture.

Just had ours done.Stripped out,including new floor boards.
We used a mix of quality.The bath was cheap but the taps and over bath shower wasn't.
The sink and vanity unit were reasonable and again the tap we chose pricey.Good quality lino,heated towel rail.
We saved money by taking everything to the tip ourselves(very small car but doable).The bath is in the garden awaiting collection as m freecycling it.
We got acrylic panels on the walls around the bath.
We could have spent less but we're not planning on moving for a few years and wanted something that would still look good then.

We spent 2.5k but that included also moving a radiator downstairs and fitting an outdoor tap.

We had plumbing for the shower moved to the opposite wall and replaced the suite. It is a shower bath with glass screen though, not a shower unit which always add up to be really expensive I think.

We went cheap on the suite, but mid range on the taps and tiles.

We managed to do a large room with lots of tiling cheaply as we did the tiling and flooring (we went for laminate so it isn't so cold but also much cheaper) and built a surround for the toilet, sink and bath from reclaimed wood. It's my favourite room in the house and guests always mention how lovely it is.

The majority of the money we spent was on labour, if you can do the tiles yourself it will save you a lot! It is actually really quite easy and therapeutic!

New solid four London panel hardwood 44 mm front door fitted in Nov was £650. That included fitting and furniture etc. Local company did it all.

Have you thought about Future proofing your bathroom? Consider low height bath and white heated rails are 30% more efficient than shiny metal ones and cheaper

We did ours ourselves.
Only buy 1/2 price materials.
Assuming it's no bigger than 12m squared.
Floor tiles and adhesive - £150
Wall tiles for 2 walls - £150
Paint for other 2 walls (buy waterproof) - £50
New suite - £300
Radiator - £50
Light fitting - £20
Blind - £50
Plumber and electrician - £120 (£60 per hour).
I don't think we spent more than about £1000

Thanks all, lots to think about. Guy came out and made some suggestions; he's a builder and he suggested acrylic panels around the wet area as although more expensive than tiles they're quicker to put up so the labour costs are lower and he said there isn't the issue with grout. I've had panels before and liked them more tbh so he's going to price for them. He also said on the internal walls the plasterboard will almost certainly come away with the tiles so he'd be looking to take it back to the timber frame and put new plasterboard up; I'm happy with that.

He's going to price what he knows he will need to do and the fixtures etc are what I choose from the catalogue. He's also looking to late March before he's able to do the job which gives me ample time to save like crazy to add to the budget.

Let us know what he says when you get the quote.

As your bathroom is currently functional and you’re just doing this to make it nicer for yourself it seems a bit mad to go too cheap on it because it’ll probably be less durable and look ‘cheap’. I’d choose the fittings I wanted, allow for the Labour then save until I had the money. If I could afford it soon I’d do that- if it was going to be a little while away I’d do the door/porch first.

As I said before, My bathroom was more than I had expected to spend, but it wasn’t extravagant and I’m happy with it. I wouldn’t have been if I’d gone with Lino and budget suite. I like the clean, square, modern lines.

You just need to think about what you want to achieve with this.

Our ensuite was over 5k. Did move quite a bit of plumbing though.

We went with the acrylic panels in the shower with silver strips in the corner, essentially to remove the need for grout. It looks better than I expected.

bit mad to go too cheap on it because it’ll probably be less durable and look ‘cheap

Not really true

Bath set I purchased £200 with 10 year guarantee. Some local only sold flimsy ones. It’s worth shopping around. I found a lot of the same items in high end stores same make/brand were 3 or 4 times the price.

@greentulips. It’s beyond ‘rare’ that you’d find a bath suite for £200 that isn’t either rubbish quality or incredibly outdated. You’re very fortunate if you did, but giving the OP false expectations isn’t going to help her. IMO.

I’m sure the OP has more sense than to buy from ‘high end stores’ when she can buy the same items direct from the manufacturer/wholesaler.

These

@greentulips

that’s more than £200, it’s only 4mm (no way I’d consider that & you said you wouldn’t consider flimsy - I’d call 4mm flimsy!). It doesn’t include the end or side panels or any of the waste fittings required.

Anyway, what I said was true, if you go too cheap you’ll get crap quality &/or dated designs. To me, that’s pointless when you already have a functioning bathroom.

I’m sure the OP can make her own mind up based on a variety of opinions & suggestions 😊

I know someone who slipped in their 3mm bath and put their knee through it. 😮
They went for a 10mm when they had it replaced.