bathrooms... pooled mumsnet wisdom please!

[hairtwiddler]

The plumber delivered bad news today and it looks like we'll have to totally rip out and replace our shower. We've decided it would be daft not to do the rest of the bathroom at the same time.

I have never had to re-do a bathroom before and am terrified at the thought. We need to get it sorted as we have a slow leak from the shower and are scared of what lurks beneath!

At the moment - fairly clinical - tiled from floor to ceiling in white tiles with green strip of tiles around shoulder height. Lino floor. I think it looks like a public loo! DH wants to keep the tiles and thinks half tiles half paper is a bad idea.

Ok, long enough for an advice post. Tell me about your bathroom please! Details re: cost and sourcing of suites etc much appreciated.

prob best to avoid a roll top then, and go for something that you can put a side/panel on (dust city!!!)

What I can't see doesn't bother me
This is close to causing a domestic in our house. There's no good time for major house disruption though.

Maidamess has spooked me out -shes virtually described our bathroom (other than ours is a duck egg blue/green colour and has a wooden parquet floor)

We did our bathroom last summer, approx costs were:

Shower enclosure and tray and cabinet £1000 from bathstore.

Shower £250 from local plumbers merchants who were really helpful in helping us pick a decent shower that would suit our plumbing system.

Bath, loo and basin £800-900 from B&Q bought when they had one of their discount 1/3 off sales.

New windows, one large and one small £300.

Tiles for walls and floor £1000.

Tiling mostly done by my dad for free but got tilers to do the fiddly shower bit £300-400.

Plumbing £300 but a friend of my dad's did it so probably much less than the going rate.

My dad also kindly ripped out the old bathroom.

It looks great now but it was a pita getting it done.

Betty you obviously have grrrreat taste!

ok, we have a Victorian house and large bathroom with polished boards on floor, sweet cast iron fireplace and a sweey little roll top bath with feet on..the rest is a corner shower,loo and basin in a vanity unit..all a bit tatty,esp shower...oh and a tongue and groove ceiling, so it has quite a beach hutty feeling which I want to keep - we have lots of little seasidey bits and pieces,pictures etc - we're taking all the bits out and replacing with a bath with power shower over, new loo and basin...the old bath will go in my garden,if we can get it down the stairs in one piece. It's all coming from bathstore.com, and shower from Aqualisa. I hate the idea of slick,clinical or hotel-like bathrooms..we're having some nice powder blue, turquoise and cobalt tiles and some floating shelves and a little tongue and groove cupboard.
Am dreading it !

Thanks for all info, very much appreciated. Still musing on it, but feel a bit more now like I know what I want!

Hello ht - we got ours in the old flat (if you remember) from bathstore.com. Great stuff, good delivery etc. Loved loved loved the P shaped bath (esp when heavily pregnant) - though it's designed to have showers over, so pretty moot in your ginormous bathroom. The whole thing there, including tiling was £3000, and in hindsight the plumbers we used were really expensive, so should be cheaper than that (esp if you don't go for stupidly expensive tiles. Properly hung paper with washable emulsion should be fine for parts - tile more around bath and sink. You don't need to change your loo, do you? That's more expensive, and so if you could get away with keeping that you'd save money - change handle and seat to bring it up to date.

I quite liked the tongue and groove panelling in our bathroom (once we'd painted over the vile colour). Like it in the one we have now too.

Get a bath with a wall panelled taps or ones in the middle. Good for sharing...