To think £7k is steep for a new bathroom?

[Zara85]

I may very well be the unreasonable one here, but I've had 2 quotes now for between £6000 - £6300 for a new bathroom. This involves all new stuff and tiling but excludes tiles, so we were told to add an extra £800 ish on top too taking it to £7000
It also excludes electrics as my husband can do the lights etc.
The bathroom is not huge- 6"x8" and we don't want anything spectacular.
We have £4500 in the bank and really thought / hoped this would be enough. We told them our budget too and that we can't go over in hopes that they would work to our budget. We now basically have to save another 3k which will take forever as we have 2 under 2 in full time childcare!

Does anyone have any tips on how to save cost on this? We looked at the wall panels instead of tiles but just couldn't warm to them. Help!

I usually reckon on 6 grand + per bathroom. So it seems reasonable.

DIY is all very well if you have the time and energy but if you have kids it would be much simpler to pay to get it done quickly.

The cheapest way would be just to replace what you have as is. Maybe keep the same size shower and don’t move the loo?

You’ve looked at Wickes and B and Q bathroom suites etc?

Some laminate flooring is surprisingly convincing. You could do stone laminate tiles or limed oak laminate flooring to save cash.

We used Wickes about 3 years ago, and had a new bathroom put in for just under £4k all included.

Layout stayed the same, walls were replastered but then only partially re-tiled, no change to lighting, vinyl sheet flooring. So we chose cheaper options. But it looked good then, and still looks good now 3 years on. The only complaint I would have is that the plastic bath panel is rather flimsy.

Faux stone

We had panels not tiles in our bathroom. Think the panels can be a bit pricey but less labour costs.

As others have said moving the toilet will put up the price, is there anyway you can avoid this?

Sounds about right, unfortunately.

We put a new bathroom in, in 2009, and unlike most people we know, don't have any family or friends who will do stuff at 'cost price,' or for mates rates. So it cost us £4.5K even then. (For a 7 foot X 9 foot bathroom!)

We initially got a quote that was £2.7K, which was OK, but when the guy doing it, started to fit the shower, he said our electrics are outdated, and potentially dangerous, and need changing. THAT put it up by £500.

Then the tiling bumped it up by about another £700, (for the labour for him to do it.) Wasn't included on the original quote, and they claimed it was just for the price of the tiles, (on the quote,) and it didn't include labour.

Along with several other things, that conveniently had not been included, it ended up being double what we had first been told. The work was already well underway, so we couldn't back out.

Also, we got rid of our old steel bathtub, and had a new plastic one. Worst decision ever - it was fucking awful. Within WEEKS, the steel bars that were supporting it, started to cause a dark shadow at the bottom of the white plastic bath. Shit it was! We will never, ever have a plastic bath again. (We are in a different house now, with a STEEL bath!)

Ours is 5'7'' by 6'. In 2003 ours cost £5000 inc VAT for a complete refit including tiling. In this bathroom it included tiling over exisiting tiles, new bath suite including new bath cradle (the wooden bit underneath the bath), mirror, installing an electric mini power shower, new light fittings, non-slip flooring, integral fan (as no window) disposal of old bathroom and all labour. This was from our builder of 30 yrs who has since retired and had been great.

£7k sounds about right. Always get three quotes usually rule of thumb is to pick the middle one but see what is included.

Wickes do sheets on how to tile. But leave plumbing and electrics to the professionals.

It sounds about right. We had ours done, similar size 10 years ago so allowing for inflation and VAT being more now, it's on par. I remember being rather surprised about how expensive the curved, meet in middle shower doors were - that's what bumped our price up - we didn't have much choice due to layout though.

Sounds similar to the quotes I had when I got mine done too. Most of it is labour, especially tiling. The bath, sink, loo etc. were not expensive at all. It took 10 working days and some of the time there were two guys, mostly just one though.

Are you getting quotes from Wickes and the like?
We had our tiny ensuite done and the big brand company quotes were, frankly insane. We weren’t even having any tiling.

In the end I got a recommendation from a friend for a self employed plumber/ fitter and bought the entire suite from Better Bathrooms online, they have a few showrooms around the country so we also were able to visit one to just check we liked what we'd chosen.
www.betterbathrooms.com/

We spent about £2,800 in total (£2k for rip out and fitting). We didn’t have any tiling as we had acrylic panels in the shower enclosure (would highly recommend as look great abd much easier to clean / hygienic).
Also had vinyl flooring laid because a) it’s a tiny space and much cheaper b) I prefer it under foot as tiles are cold.

To bring your costs down I’d suggest sourcing the suite yourself, reducing the tiled walls to a minimum (we painted the walls with bathroom paint) and not tiling the floor

Forgot to say Wickes wanted £4K for exactly the same as what we ended up with

Depends wherd in the coutrgyyou are. we just had our downstairs loo done - £3000. we are in the southeast.

I second shopping online. Couldn’t believe the price of Topps tiles!

We got some lovely floor tiles from tiles direct www.tiles-direct.com/

And then we also went to the n and c shop for wall tiles: www.nctilesandbathrooms.com

But there are lots of good tile places online and they will send you a tile or a sample cut from a tile for a small fee before you buy to help you choose.

We got most of our bathroom fittings from Victorian plumbing www.victorianplumbing.co.uk/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI85-u-rrU3wIVyLHtCh1rugbxEAAYASAAEgJFDPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds and have been happy with them except the sink outlet we bought where the plug goes up and down but can’t be removed from the sink so the sink sometimes overfills.

When I refurbished my parents' house I paid £11k for supply and fitting of a new kitchen, moving soil pipe, installation of new bath, basin and loo, which I sourced separately so another £1k and tiling - I bought the tiles from Topps. So £7k just for a new bathroom sounds very steep indeed to me.

I bought the bathroom fittings from Wickes and found my builder on one of the sites where you put in details of your job and they quote for it. I had three quotes and chose the guy I liked best.

That doesn't sound too expensive really OP, I wouldn't cut costs too much as it will seriously impact the quality and how long your bathroom will last. Have you considered tiling half way up the walls and painting the rest?

I have a small bathroom that I got redone 2 years ago. I went pretty budget TBH. Have looked back through my costings.

Total was pretty much bang on £6.5k HOWEVER the guy that was doing the bathroom was basically renovating the entire of my upstairs as well so there were some economies of scale here I would think.

Tiles £520 (these were pretty much the cheapest you could get from B&Q)

• Bathroom suite (small P shaped plastic bath, toilet, vanity sink unit, bath pannel, shower screen, taps, shower) cost £1200
• Misc other fittings £420 (mirror cab,towel radiator, fan etc)
• Additional plumber visit £200
• Floorboards + labor cost £500 as turned out mind were rotted around the toilet that had been leaking

Initial quoted labour was £4,570 for the following:

Remove, dispose and replace existing bath, toilet and sink.
Install small wall unit with acessible top to house cistern of a 'back to wall' toilet.
The wall will be tiled on the front (client to supply tiles) and the top will be made from a curved edge MDF and then painted client's selected colour.
Remove and dispose of existing tiles from walls and floor.
Plaster all walls ready for tiling.
Tile all walls and floor
Remove and replace door and door frame.
Fit mirror or cabinet with electric point
Remove radiator and fit towel rail.
Fit electric fan with a delay start
Move pull cord light switch to other side of the door, near bath.
Box cistern to toilet £250. Make shelving unit next to cistern box out of mdf prime undercoat and paint. £120

This price includes all materials needed to complete the work except for toilet, cistern, sink, any taps, bath, shower screen or mirror/cabinet

FYI I wish seriously that I had ponied up the extra cash and got UFH put in. Or at least got a bigger towel radiator that is electric as well as central heating powered because my bathroom is always cold :-(

You could DIY, if plumbing is already there it's not too difficult and we have always done our own. The last one cost less than 1k and that was for everything, flooring, new bath, toilet, sink, tiles, paint, taps, heated towel rail etc

I redid two small bathrooms in the past year, in London, complete rebuild including replace floors and plasterboard walls. No tiling. The cost per bathroom average 11K, breakdown something like:-

5K labour
4K stuff I thought to buy (everything except pipes and building materials)
2K other expenses (mirrors, rubbish removal, electrician, building materials etc.)

I am very happy with the overall look of my bathroom, and looks and works just as good years later.

That does seem a lot. We bought bathroom suite ourselves. And tiles. And paid someone to fit it, and they hired the tiler. £6k

If it's a high ceiling, how does the cost of tiling the top bits of the walls compare with the cost of putting in a false ceiling?

We looked at the wall panels instead of tiles but just couldn't warm to them.

I used acrylic panels, I chose not to make them a visual focus of the room, so got them in matt white to match the painted walls. The way I think about this is, why should a wall that sometimes get wet be more colourful/beautiful/interesting than walls that don't?

The focal point of my bathroom is a wall that is not directly above any bath or shower tray, I also have colour in the floors.

We have recently had a small bathroom and tiny ensuite done by Wickes. Cost around £15,000 not including tiles and electric work. Quite frankly they were awful. It started in May and went onuntil September. Their fitments are not good quality either.

Our downstairs loo was done by a local plumber. We got the loo sink etc from a local plumbers merchant and they are much better quality. It was done in 2 days for a couple of thousand including tiles.

We had 2 new bathrooms last year. One with bath and one with walk in shower. We went fairly high end with Villeroy and Boch pottery, hansgrohe taps, amtico floor, Italian full tiles, furniture etc. It was just under £20k including everything - ceilings skimmed, electrics etc.
£7k for one with less high end stuff (I got carried away!) should be plenty?

I did a bit of personal research on this recently because we want to do some home improvements but had no idea about costs. Apparently 7k is about average for a new bathroom putting paid to our home improvement plans Would love a new kitchen too but no chance