Should I prioritise bathroom or garden?

[byathread20]

We’ve recently had our help to save account payout so have a total of £3500 to spend. We were planning to redo the bathroom after 2.5yrs of owning our house. The bathroom isn’t in a terrible state, it’s quite modern but the bath has a large chip in it, the toilet often runs so have to pay £60 twice a year for a plumber and the vanity unit has some water swelling.

Just before the savings account paid out, the decking in our garden (again already there when we bought house) began to sink at one side. I had a carpenter come to have a look who said timber frame is rotten so whole thing will need to be taken up, new frame and new decking boards.

I’m really torn between what to do as bathroom was part of plan in terms of fixing up the house however decking is an unexpected repair and could be dangerous if one of my children fell through the damaged decking.

I’m completely stuck on what to do as we won’t likely have these savings again as we live very hand to mouth (I’m an NHS worker and husband in office role) and have a very high mortgage (joys of South East) and lots of costs due to having two disabled children and paying for childcare due to us both working. I know this is a first world problem but generally interested in what others would do. We haven’t got a quote for bathroom but Wickes said roughly £7k-£10k which would mean putting some on finance. We haven’t had a quite for decking either but likely to cost a lot as timber costs have gone up. We would consider putting down a patio to keep costs down.

The bath chip, does it leak or is it just cosmetic? Could you replace just the toilet for now, that can be done for a few hundred from the likes of B&Q? Then prioritise the decking as it is a safety issue? That saves you £120 a year going forward til you can afford to replace the rest of the bathroom, if the sink and bath work fine but are cosmetically not the greatest.

Do you need to replace the decking with anything structural? Could you just take it up and turn the area on to lawn or garden

I'd prioritise the bathroom and make the decking safe by dismantling it and taking it to the local recycling site. There are probably rats/mice underneath...

The bathroom would always take priority for me as you use it several times a day, you need to get good value from your bathroom. I'm sure if you do some asking around you can get better quotes than Wickes' suggestion, although it does depend on what you definitely need to replace and what you can get away with for sprucing it up and reusing any pieces that are OK.

As above, replace the decking with patio, buy a new toilet and/or bath and sink (very cheaply and get them replaced like for like by a cheap local plumber) and have the best of both worlds. Or keep the 3.5k in the bank if you live hand to mouth and have no savings for emergencies thats not ideal.

The bathroom you could probably attempt yourself for a lot less. Can you not swap the vanity into for a new one? The chip might be repairable (unless it really a crack and leaks). The loo sound like a stuck valve in the cistern - a trip to a plumbers merchant should source a new one, unless it’s a hidden cistern, you tube might be your friend !
that would then leave you the bill of the money to replace the decking. If you remove it yourselves, the money might go a bit further - even if you still have to pay for a skip, as it saves man hours of labour.

if diy really isn’t an option to save money, then fix the bathroom as it is used daily and the costs saved in wasting water/plumbers fees may well help your budget elsewhere over this winter.

Doesn't sound like you need a complete new bathroom just change the vanity unit and toilet.

Then use the rest to sort out the garden decking/patio......

Garden def. Your dc won't give two hoots if they have a nice bathroom..

you don’t have to do the whole bathroom. And not from wickes of you are on a tight budget.

on the deck, I would never have one again. They are a nightmare to maintain - get very slippy in winter of not treated and rot. Also my brother is a builder and calls them rat hotels🤮.

rip up the deck and with grass or pave it.

Definitely don’t want decking again as we spent hours and hours painting last year with non slip paint and it flakes off everywhere and gets walked all through the house!

Regarding the thing about rats/mice, I do wonder as we had mice in the house recently which is mad as we have cats who are forever eating mice but obviously didn’t catch these ones!

I would be happy to try and take the decking and the frame up myself but I am so petrified of spiders that I would probably end up curled into a ball, crying by the end of it.

The chip in the bath is purely cosmetic, it doesn’t leak but is about the size of two 50ps side by side where our cat knocked a beach stone off the windowsill onto it.

The bathroom is floor to ceiling tiles so my worry about taking things out and replacing is that the tiles will start falling off the walls as some do look a bit loose in places. I have done a bit of a Google and being NHS, I can save 12.5% from Victoria Plum on bits and pieces but I just don’t know how much a typical price is for someone just to fit the things that we supply. Any bathroom fitters/bathroom fitter’s wives on here?

I literally hate that I have this mental debate as it’s such an “adult” thing and I don’t think I’m ready for that 😂

You can rip up the decking! Just visualise spiders as money - think of all those £10 notes just running away. Yes they are rodent hotels as they are a safe space for them.
Tiling is easy, you just need patience. You tube for hints and tips. You CAN BOTH do this. Just think of all that money in man hours you will be saving.

As for the bath - deal a flannel over it for now and try not to think about it. It doesn’t leak, so it’s useable until money is easier.

Sorry to be harsh - but stop with wanting it all to look instagram perfect. Serviceable is enough when you’ve got children and a very tight budget. Instagram photos won’t pay for heating etc and a little safety net (£) is better than a photo anyway.

Definitely the garden, though not necessarily replacing the deck.

Gardens take time, and the more work you put in at the start, the sooner you'll have the lovely effects. This what my late DH and I did when we bought our Aussie house, and it paid off handsomely: a lovely garden to look at through every window. From the tip of a house

I’ve just bought a new toilet, shower cubicle, base and shower from Victoria plum. I hired a plumber who charged me £150 to fit the toilet, and £300 for the shower. I also want to replace the sink and bath eventually to match the toilet and he has quoted £150 for each item of hardware.

Wait for a sale on Victoria plum. I wouldn’t pay Wickes prices and certainly not £7-10k! My mum had a wall removed between the toilet and bathroom, bath ripped out, level access shower and new toilet, sink and wall panels for 3.5k last year.

My priority would be the toilet because of the twice a year plumbing expense.

Next, pay someone to take out the unsafe decking.

Everything else is cosmetic and can be done as and when you can afford it.

@Alphabet1spaghetti2 its nothing like that at all, honestly I couldn’t care about how the house looks to others on SM, it’s more about us putting our own stamp on the place over time as we never thought we’d be able to own a house after a string of shitty bad luck financially and navigating the council housing route after being made homeless when falling pregnant. We just want to be able to enjoy living here given that we pay £1000 a month for the mortgage 😬

Seven to ten grand is a complete bathroom refurb from pipe work to tiles to white goods. If you live hand to mouth then getting into debt isn’t a good idea. Just replace what leaks.

you can rip the decking out yourself

In your position, I'd be aiming to keep as much as possible in the bank.

You can buy epoxy kits for repairing chips. Might improve it visually.

Get the cistern or toilet replaced and maybe a new vanity unit.

Decking is easy enough to take out but it's what it's covering. Where is it in your garden? By the house or elsewhere? Decorative gravel and some pots can be an easy solution.

So I'd aim to spend no more than a grand between them and keep a rainy day fund. You can still add your stamp. Just try and do so cost effectively. This is not a good time not to have a buffer

I think you would get much more for your money if you buy the bathroom white goods, tiles and flooring and then pay an outside builder/plumber to install them separately. Having a package from wickes/homebase and so on is notoriously expensive. Also it doesn't need to be expensive in terms of plumbing and tiles, think simple: clean lines and some nice plants. Agree with others saying forget the decking and either patch it up yourselves or remove it and tidy the space for now if you can.

If you are just getting rid of the decking then you’ve got a couple of options. If any of it is decent and usable offer it free on Freecycle as to be removed and taken away. Or smash it up. The nouse and vibrations will scare any spiders away.
Wickes is expensive for bathrooms. I had a quote ( few years back) for £7000. I got exactly the same type of bath plus integrated WC, basin, cupboards, all wastes and taps, fitted, for less than half their price.

You're not seriously considering paying someone to sort the decking out just because you don't like spiders? Woman up! You're a homeowner on a very low budget - you need to acquire some basic diy skills. Sledgehammer the lot out. Buy slabs and sand and cement. One weekends work and job done for a few hundred.

In your position, I’ll be aiming to keep £1500 at least as a safety nest and do what I can with the £2k left.
We had a neighbour who is a handy man rip out our decking last summer because it was rotting and we don’t use it anyway. He then smooth it and put gravel there and some other parts of the garden too. Including his workmanship, it was around £500 and we paid someone we found on fb £50 to take the wood away.
For the bathroom, if you buy the individual items that need replacing urgently separately and get a plumber to fix them, you’ll get more value for your money that way

In the bathroom, I would ignore anything that is cosmetic. Things that aren’t working properly need to be repaired or replaced. Anything that might cause water damage or mold needs to be fixed.

for the garden, if it’s a safety hazard it has to be dealt with.

I would try to come up with a plan to address both that doesn’t deplete your savings entirely. Focus on necessity and function.

With the way the economy is looking, I would advise anyone to try to keep a cushion in place if they have one. Fixing things that are broken is a wise investment because it saves money in the long run. Making the house pretty is nice, but it isn’t a necessity.

We had this same dilemma recently. We had to do some bathroom
repairs. It would have made sense to swap out some other things at the same time. We would have had more choices in style and in the grand scheme of things those things will need to be replaced at some point. But the truth is that the pieces we kept are still working perfectly and have many years of functionality left. We couldn’t justify spending the extra money and cutting into our safety net. (So I remain stuck with the color scheme I am ridiculously tired of).

It's amazing what you can learn by watching YouTube videos!

I'm not sure why you can't purchase the items you need and DIY? Decking isn't difficult to sort out. Especially if it's only one part. (We've fixed ours)

Ditto bathroom.. dh and I have plumbed in showers, toilets etc. These can be purchased fairly cheaply from wickes/victoria plumb and the like.

I'd be stashing some of that money in a savings account tbh.

Or...you could ask on fb for local handypeople...our local one charges £60 per half day work?...

This. NDN has done this and it is a big improvement