To ask what bathroom mistakes you have made

[Egoanono]

Doing up the bathroom at the mo, ripping it out and starting from scratch. Mid range budget but want a high end finish. I'd love to learn from your mistakes (and successes! please.

Coveting the grey grout and shower niches!

Successes : steel bath, heated towel rail radiator, free-standing loo roll holder.
PITA : glass shelf, pop-up plugs, cheap taps, heavy glass ceiling light that fell and shattered.

We got natural looking "stone" floor tiles in a pale colour - they always look grubby so don't do it!

Also the day before our order was due to come Victoria plum sent me a breezy email to tell me that the sink and cabinets were out of stock. We had ordered 6 weeks before and they took over a month to turn up and I never even got an apology. I would never use them again.

We have just had an ensuite wet room built in our extension, which is downstairs

Brilliant things

Light tunnels in ceiling loads of light coming in from southerly direction even when Windows don't point that way iyswim
Huge shower wet room end so enough room to move around
ALTRO floor which covers whole floor and makes whole room watertight and non slip
Make sure shower area is furthest from door so when using toilet or sink you have dry feet
Agree with others about storage

A mistake that we saw when looking round houses was sink underneath window so no room on wall for mirror over sink (DH wet shaves so needs mirror and sink together iyswim)

Don't get a fixed head shower, bugger to clean the cubicle as you cannot rinse down the cubicle you have to throw buckets of water up the sides. Grr!

Our bathroom had NO storage space at all and the windowsill was crammed with the stuff we use every day. It used to get my back up seeing it so messy and was a pig to clean.

Enter the bathroom storage cabinet - from the front when you come in it looks like this:

Then:

I like it a lot.

So not a mistake per se but definitely look to maximise your storage. So annoying having to store loo rolls, towels, toiletries, etc elsewhere. Our bathroom is very small and there just wasn't any space for anything else.

I wanted the built in sink cabinet as well but our bathroom was too narrow to accommodate it - about 2 cms too short. Pah!

So haven't rtft but success:
Double head shower (ie one fixed, one hand held, separate flow controls).
Sorting out the water pressure - nothing interrupts the shower!
Underfloor heating - dries the floor even though it always gets a bit wet.
Basin type sink looks good - was cheap but looks expensive
Grey grout with silvery grey shower tiles (sounds wierd but works)

Failures:
Black granite (under basin sink) in a hard water area. Wtf was I thinking?
Not kicking up a fuss when the guy who did the tiling used the same light grey grout instead of the black grout I requested for the floor tiles - looks crap and still annoys me.
Getting it done in a hurry and panic just before christmas and coming home Christmas Eve to find shower leaking through to floor below.

From our experience: simple white tiles on the walls (square, Wickes) that cost nothing, but look a lot more expensive with grey grout. Money saved on wall tiles can go to more expensive (-looking) floor tiles. Another great thing that makes a small bathroom look bigger is to build in a recessed mirror wall cabinet above the sink. Storage without bulk. We made a recess and put in a regular Ikea wall caninet that now looks a lot better than stuck out. We have tiny bathroom, and replacing bath with large walk-in rainshower was great. Bathroom looked a lot bigger, and could accommodate a double sink suddenly, while before there was a single sink stuck next to the bath that could only have one person stand ther at a time. One thing we did not manage (no space) was to separate the toilet. I dislike having toilet in bathroom, but we had to compromise on that. Ooh and for brands: shop around. Very good experiences with victoria plum (cheap but excellent customer service - replaced a faulty showerhead at once and without discussion). Always like Ikea. We had their cabinet, but then placed more expensive basin on top (do need to measure). And toilet with more expensive seat also works. When in doubt, and on budget: simple always better. Good luck!

Ooh, and underfloor heating is worth every penny. You can set it on timer so doesn't run all day. And combination overhead shower with handheld is a must for me - easier to shower kids, and rinsing hair. Matrix by Victoria Plum.

I'm taking copious notes and will be pinching loads of these ideas.

ancientandmodern

Whilst I am in the shower when it's still running I spray the glass with cif or any bathroom cleaner, wipe it all with a sponge (to get rid of any shower gel, shampoo marks and streaks) then either use a manual shower plastic wiper thing or a karcher window vac. The window vac basically hoovers the water off leaving the glass dry, streak free and clean. I do this most days (unless I'm really rushing). It takes 2 mins and leaves the shower looking sparkly and new! A visitor once asked me how I managed to keep my shower looking that clean (how shameful, I've obviously got too much time on my hands!). But it's so worth it. Karcher available is most DIY type stores and great for doing windows, bifold doors etc - best gadget I've ever bought.

Deeedeeee - I've looked at omnitubs but can't find any pictures of them fitted in a real (UK) bathroom. Would you sharing some pics of yours?

Sure! Hold on, I'll see if I can find one. If not I'll do it tomorrow as just got into bed x

We just did ours.
Successes:
Shower controls placed so that you are not under the water when it turns on, so you can adjust temperature before getting in.
Bathroom cabinet with charger socket INSIDE, meaning we can hide away our unsightly electric toothbrushes.
Clock on the mirror, stops us taking too long in the shower and being late for work.
Drawers instead of cupboards under the sink.
Marking out the whole layout in masking tape on the floor of another room to check that we were happy with the ease of use.
Two robe hooks on the wall. One on the back of the door is not enough.

PITA:
Real slate tiles on floor feel great under the feet, and are naturally non slip but are showing limescale really badly. We are about to buy a central water softening system for the whole house to deal with this.

Has anyone regretted a concealed shower. The type where it's just the tap knobs sticking out of the wall with the pipe work hidden? I'm drawn to the look as it would minimise fiddly bits to clean but have a fear of everything having to be torn out of something goes wrong

I bought a bidet which is a pretentious waste of space. It was useful when I broke my leg as I could sit on the loo and fill the bidet with warm water to have an all over wash.
I also really regret getting rid of the bath although that was a necessity as do couldn't climb in and there was only room for an over bath shower. I miss it so much when I am cold and tired even though we have a big walk in shower cubicle. The room is tiny.

Sorry haven't RT in full. But consider:
electric points for multiple electric toothbrushes not just one! the modern world...

underslung sinks with taps on wall above them (and no gap between sink and wall so wet hands drip into sink) are much easier to keep dry and clean. But you DO need a counter around the sink to put things down.

a moveable shower head in shower (you can have rainfall and moveable in same shower), ditto in bath even if only used for bathing, makes cleaning easier

the bigger the tiles the better; less grouting to mould -- and save extra tiles for sake of future repairs, because otherwise the colour will never match, batches vary

and
my favourite
if you have any males in the house, have the flush button for the loo set directly behind the lid of the loo so they are forced to put down both seat and lid to flush! that'll teach them

We've just ripped out two bidets. Bathrooms were last done in the 80s. I shall miss them actually. They're surprisingly useful (but I'd rather have the extra space because the rooms are not large).

Wankers- I really like your bathroom.

We did the bathroom in our house and then ended up selling it after 6 months, but we did the following:
Steel Bette bath with a square end, as we were bath over shower. Made a huge difference from our old standard bath.
Previous mosaic tiles drove me nuts, so we replaced with big grey tiles and an off white grout.
Paid extra for a decent screen, that wasn't flimsy.
Shower was a Crosswater Digital, which was just amazing. Sleek looking, you could control it by an app and placed the controls outside the shower splash area so you don't have the awkward cold wet arm on winter mornings!
We had a teeny bathroom, so under floor heating was going to be pointless, so we went for Karndean flooring instead, fully waterproof, but not cold like tiles. A nice colour so you weren't constantly looking at dirty foot/paw prints.
An all singing all dancing cupboard with Bluetooth, heated mirror and LED lighting that you just waved your hand under to switch on. It had shaver sockets in it, so toothbrushes were out of sight charging and when elderly parents come to visit, they didn't have to turn on full lights at 2am to see what they were doing. Which brings me nicely to the my final and most important reccomendation:
As quiet a fan as you can find!!! Our old fan was like a 747 taking off, when either myself or DH getting up for a shower at 5.30am on the others day off, you could stay asleep rather than giving the offender the evil eye from under the duvet!

If you get a teeny tiny sink don't put a big cupboard above it otherwise spitting toothpaste is difficult.

Don't get pretty looking frosted glass ceiling lights from B&Q for teeny ensuite with no natural light. They are inadequate to say the least!

Heated mirror would be nice if we had had the £££.

Love my humidity sensor extractor fans - great when you realise mid shower you forgot to turn the light on!

First Window vac (or even squeegee) on shower cubicle after use - not only does it keep it clean and reduce the build of mould/gunk on grout/seal but it also reduces condensation in the house. You will be amazed how much water you collect in a window vac ...and unless you leave your fan on for hours after use until it is dry that water would go into the atmosphere so is potentially condensation. And you get cheaper window vacs that would be good enough for shower (Lidl do them for about £18 every so often -but I've never managed to get one )
pure I have a shower like that - lived here for 16 yrs and had no problem with it...but it is on an internal partition so I could get to the working from the outside rather than the tile side. Outside is real wood tongue and groove like the bath panel was - so would need to destroy it but that would be easier than a tiled walled...if/when I need to I plan on putting an access panel in -which I guess you could do on the tiled side when fitted ...
And yes it is easier to keep clean - also on mine the thermostat/ washers etc can all be accessed from the knobs - so eg I've put a new thermostat cartridge in with no disruption.
The only other thing I would say is I guess I would insist on having it done in copper piping and checking everything was sealed before tiling etc
Copper piping rather than plastic - copper has a life expectancy of 50+yrs, even with modern plastic the jury is out - the fittings/connections more likely to be the issue than the piping - although I know I have some that was fitted in the 80s (under the floors, not easy to get to) which was still being fitted in the 90s and now has been reported as been prone to sudden breakage... Also when I needed new fittings for an alteration I couldn't get the right type of insert/connector (plastic pipe aren't -or weren't at least- standardised fittings/sizes)...I had to reuse one to connect up to the nice new copper...
(Plastic waste pipes are ok - better than cast iron -but they aren't under the same pressure as feed pipes ...and if one leaks it only leaks when you are emptying the bath/having a shower -not constantly...)

before and after (with onmi tub)

Fab deedee! Love the green tiles.