Bathroom woes

[BoBoo]

We've just bought a new house and when we viewed the house we thought the bathroom looked great, but now we're living with it, it's become apparent that while it may look nice, it's totally impractical.

To start with the bath has only got taps and no shower attachment. There's a separate shower, but it's really annoying if you want to wash/rinse you hair in the bath and totally not handy when it comes to cleaning the bath. I think this is probably the easiest thing to remedy and with a bit of instruction I'm sure I could swap the taps.

There is a separate shower, but there is a huge fixed shower head. Again, no help when it comes to cleaning the shower and means it's not possible to just take a quick shower and not get your hair wet. Does anyone have any idea how easy/difficult it would be to rectify this and whether it's something I could possibly do myself, or whether we should think about getting a plumber out.

And finally, the toilet. It's been enclosed so you can't access the cistern. Not a huge problem at the moment, although I'd like to put some in to stop limescale, but will be as soon as there's a problem. It also means there's no way to fix the toilet training seat we have as you can't get access to where it would fit to the seat. Likewise, there's no way to adjust the seat which is on there now and has come loose. Any ideas?

You can buy mixer taps with a shower attachment which work well on baths if there is enough water pressure. Simple job for plumber to switch them over (if the tap is a mixer, feel underneath, there may be a small thread that allows you to fit a shower extension, available for about #20 from B&Q).

I bought fixed head shower for my shower not thinking about practicalies (although I don't find my hair gets wet if I don't want it to when I shower). Only solution is to fit additional shower with flexible lead which will be costly as it will mean removing tiles etc to get to plumbing.

I've always avoided having loo with concealed system because of worries if something goes wrong. Maybe someone who has one will come along with advice - is there any obviously removable panel?

It looks like there should be a removable panel, but it's not. It seems like it's cemented shut. It was rented before we bought it, so nobody had to live with the stupid decisions they made.

What kind of water/boiler system do you have?

I've just finished doing bathroom fit outs and I noticed that the main shower manufacturers all seem to do retro-fit showers that are designed to use the plumbing to your current shower. I think Grohe and Aqualisa do them.

Is the shower valve and pipe exposed or is it concealed in the wall? If exposed I think you might be able to swap it over. If so my suggestion would be to take a photo of it and go to City Plumbing if there's a branch near you and ask them about retro-fit showers.

Otherwise if it is all concealed I can't see any option other than rip it out and start again. We've just installed a shower with overhead shower head and a hand shower for the reasons you outline.

You should be able to pick up easily a bath mixer with handshower and that swap over should be straight forward assuming the bath panel is removable and you can get to the taps. Is it?

If the concealed cistern is sealed shut (how stupid!) then the only thing to do would be to prise it apart. You might get away with this as a short term measure.

Is it a stand alone unit or is it part of a bulk head with the sink? If it is a stand alone unit then you can buy purpose built concealed cisterns so you might have to change it.

I've had a concealed cistern built as part of the bulk head with the sink but the top slab is removable and the front panels pop-off. (I love my builders.)

City Plumbing would be my first port of call. I've had a great experience with them.

Have another look around the loo. We have a hanging toilet in our bathroom and the cistern is concealed. There are tiles, and they look as if they are the same as the rest of the bathroom but in reality they are not properly stuck on and can be taken off easily. Check the grout to see how hard it is? Btw we've never had a reason to remove the the tiles in the 7 years since the bathroom was installed.