Advice from Property Developers: The cheapest quote I've had for doing my bathroom is £7K - so how come on all those Property Developing programmes they can do bathrooms AND kitchens for about £3K?

[hotmama]

It's not as if I want anything particularly spectacular - new suite/shower/fully tiled/halogen lights.

In last nights Property Ladder they did 2 bathrooms and a kitchen for £3.5K. O.K. this was without labour - but how come?

Any top tips.

TIA

My plumber/bathroom fitter was a one-man-band with a helper called Dave who never spoke!!! They were like a double act. Arrived at 7am each morning and worked through until 6pm. They brought their own packed lunches and I provided tea, coffee, biscuits etc. They were finished in 4 days.

You can buy the stuff yourself for starters, don't get them to buy it as they will put a mark up on it.

Get your bath/shower/toilet from independent suppliers and shop around. Then try to buy end of range stuff - it's cheaper.

Use a tiling shop, measure the space and tell them how many square metres there are and they may sell you boxes on sale or return.

This company is an example of online suppliers

here

You could also save money by stripping the existing bathroom yourself. Then get a plumber to do the install of the suite and a tiler to do the rest

we completely redid our bathroom but didn't want full tiling or the halogen lights and kept the existing shower, but we did get...
new suite and fitting
minor layout changes
replastering whole room
retiling round bath, sink, loo, shower cubicle
painting bits not tiled
laying hardboard and vinyl tiles
new lighting, towel rails, cabinet, mirror, storage etc
for under £1k, so if we'd done two of those and a £1.5k Ikea kitchen we'd have matched the Property Ladder people's costs.
To be fair we worked very hard - shopped around for products, employed separate plumber/tiler & plasterer, and did the prep and painting ourselves, but at that point we had less money than time.
My top tip for is the Madrid take-away suite from B&Q - looks much more expensive than it really is because it has nice taps.
And try Screwfix, Jewson, Wickes, Ikea etc for tiles, towel rails, lights etc - can work out v good value if you know what you want.

I am sure I used these to find a radiator once and they were great

here

If you can source the stuff yourself, you will save a fortune.

but if they usually supply and fit and you ask for fit only then they will charge more to make up for their loss of revenue

also to bear in mind that if you buy the ceramics etc then if they are chipped or not 100% you will have to do the chasing up and replacement with potential extra time costs if you have a delay in supply

just be carefull if you are getting independants in to do it for you. i moved when 8 months pregnant. got own bathroom suite and kitchen from wholesalers, got a plumber in. all ok. dad got a tiler to come and tile them both for us, we ended up falling in love, brought a house togther start of this year and now planning our wedding!!!
seriously though, we had a lovely bathroom and kitchen at the end. just need to look and ask around.

We got our old one replaced for less than £3500 and it was a double-ended bath, looked fab. I ordered the suite from Wickes and got an independent bathroom guy to do the work. He got a subcontractor to skim our grotty walls and tiled round the bath etc himself.
Top tips for small bathrooms: large tiles, small toilet, vanity cupboard basin, matching wall cupboard over the toilet if your ceiling is high enough. All that nonsense about legs on cupboards and seeing more floorspace is rubbish - it's just more to attract dust and toys. Fitted cupboards to hide clutter when visitors come and no gaps for dirt to fall in is the lazy housewife's way. Also hooks on the back of the door at top and halfway down so nobody has any excuse not to hang up their wet towels themselves.

i am trying to get a new kitchen desugned at the mo the cheapest it is coming out is 22k i would love to know how property ladder do it

OKay the big thing to remember is that all those expensive baths and taps are what bumps the costs up!

We've redone our bathroom and kitchen recently and here's our budget:

Kitchen:
Units - Ikea £1,000.
Cooker - Screwfix £250.
Cooker hood - ebay £100.
Floor - laminate from local carpet place in the sale at £3.99/sq m
new window - £400
Replaster ceiling - £100
replaster walls -£250
paint walls -£50
lights - £50
fridge and freezer - argos £350 the pair
All fitting done by DH, me and DBiL

Bathroom
Bath (steel) and taps and shower (edwardian deisgn chrome mixer with ceramic detialing)- £600 online store
Sink and toilet, - old ones from perviuos suite bought in B&Q for £100
Floor - stone look tiles £100
Wall tiles - £200
LIghting _ halogen spot lights from B&Q £50
and a chandelier picked up second hand and rewired £25
paint £50

taking out of old bath and fitting in new bath and replacing floor joist £400
two new windows £600

people think they NEED expensive baths/cookers/limestone flooring/£1,000 taps etc.

Property developers know that you spend the minimum you need to to get the job done.

We're developing this house for sale, sure we could have bought hideously expensive units from smallbone of denvies and paid £%k to have someone fit the dammed thing but there's no way we would recoup the cost.

Best tips:
online - search around there's lots of cheaper options
Buy your big things as basics - ie plain beech units, plain white sanitary wear
splash out (if you must) on smaller individual touches, ie a set of lovely dark wood 'display shelves' or a heated towel rail in the bathroom.
Set a budget of 5% of the overall selling price/value of the house for each room.
Learn to do things yourself but recognise when you need to get a professional in
DON'T buy expensive paint or wallpaper

Good luck

Not tried B&Q then Buktus? The trick is to get the pricelist and the catalogue with all the measurements and roughly design it yourself(several times) before you go for the official design consultation with the computer thingy.

i am in the process at the mo with b and q

its quite a big kitchen which isnt helping

Ours has just been finished and had complete rewire replaster new ceilng new lights tiling walls and floor and fitting All that was 3100 and the bath 2 sinks shower etc bought online for about 2k

are there any good kitchen companys online that are cheap for units

Ikea units are very cheap and surprisingly very sturdy quality according to my engineer dad. They come with an instruction video so you can feel a bit more confident in your fitter .