Is it possible to do a new bathroom for less than £1k?

[JumpingJackSprat]

The house we are hopefully buying needs a new bathroom and looking at the cost of a new suite being about £400 we thought we could probably get it done for less than a grand. However having asked around we have been told we might be looking at more like £3k including removing all the old tiles, part re tiling and making good the walls and painting the part that's not tiles, plus new vinyl flooring.

Are we being totally unrealistic? We know a builder who might be able to help for the cost of a few beers and I think we can probably do a lot of our ourselves. Realistically how much do we need to budget?

I've got that budget too. But no builder mate. Hoping for some tips!

If you csn do a lot yourself you could keep it low cost. Make sure you budget for taps (ebay is good) and tiles, grout and adhesive, sealant etc. It probably won't look very fancy but it should be useable!

The big costs are in the labour. If you can organise that yourselves, then that will keep the final figure down. But electricity and water are a dangerous mix - make sure you have someone suitably qualified doing any electric work.

yes. you can remove tiles and even retile and def paint. we used a wallpaper steamer to get the gluey stuff that the old tiles were stuff on with off.

get a quote for the vinyl or measure up floor for your decider - depends what you want there. we had it fitted as it wasn't much more and they did a really good job.

The biggest cost is definitely labour - my new bathroom just cost me more than £5k in labour and building materials, excluding the actual suite, tiles and flooring.

Unless the builder is a very, very good friend, it's an awful lot of work to ask someone to do for virtually nothing.

Stripping out the old bathroom and even installing the new suite isn't too hard if you are a bit practical and with the help of a diy book or the internet and flexible pipe connectors. All the jobs are easier/more difficult according to the materials and layout of what you want to install- e.g. some tiles are more difficult to use than others (and some are very more time consuming/increase labour costs); or if you want to fit an electric shower you will need lots of wiring done if there isn't one there already and the work completed or signed off by an electrician. If you want to change the layout you would need to move the pipes around, which requires more tools and is more difficult. My bathroom shelves and bath panel are made from an old wardrobe, and the flooring is cheap and easy to fit laminate from b&q, its a few years old now but still looks nice.

Impossible in my view.

hi £3k is more realistic. especially if you want a bathroom you want to walk into and think "I like this".
for £1k you will probably get "this will do for now".
ours cost just over £4k for everything, but we had it tiled all over, new radiator, pipes moved, lay out changed and separate shower cubicle with a good shower installed. and we went for decent quality suite as they generally last longer.
I would rather pay someone to do it properly, who knows what they're doing than risk leaks etc later on. our chap did 10 bathrooms last year and he did a fab job.

we did it ourselves - himself is very good at this kind of thing, and I would say it was about 2 person-weeks of work. A professional might be a little quicker.

suite and materials were about £700 from a plumbers merchant, with accessories from Wilkinsons; same as the posh stuff but much cheaper.

so no chance for £1k.

Have a look at the plumbworld website, they often have nice stuff on clearance.

Quality of taps makes a big difference. Bristan are very good.

If you have to buy a cheap shower mixer, get an exposed one (not buried in the wall) and fitted on a mixer mounting plate. Then when it goes wrong you can unscrew it and fit a better one.

You can save tiling by painting the walls, but that depends on you being able to do flat, smooth plaster. You can tile later.

You will need a good extractor fan.

If the floor is chipboard, pull it up for the bonfire and put down WBP ply.

You will save money by honing your handywoman skills.

I could do it. Easily. I think my new large en suite (tots up quickly) under 600. The smaller en suite (with electric shower) cost a bit more because the cabling for the shower needed to be redone (300), I bought a new electric shower, tray and bifold doors for an awkward space (350) and I paid a suitably qualified person to come in and fit it (150). But I did most things myself and anyone who is the slightest bit handy and has a copy of the Readers Digest Guide to DIY could too.

So large en suite was a second hand (but lovely) acrylic slipper bath and beautiful mixer taps and pipe shrouds (150), a second hand massive chrome race track shower rail (40), an Ikea Hemnes washstand from bargain corner (60, but they're not masses more new), a new Ikea sink to go on it (60), a nice tap from ebay (35), a loo (60) a few bits and bobs in terms of mirrors and mats (30), a chrome towel radiator from Screwfix and valves (40), pretty bathroom paint from Dulux (30), a lightfitting from Ikea (10), vinyl floor tiles (Gerflor Pop, 6 sqm + postage, bought 5 sqm, think it was about 40) and a couple of shower curtains. Done.

I personally don't like tiles very much, but they're not difficult to do if you go slowly, prepare the walls and make sure your lines are straight. And use tile spacers, a good tile cutter and a tile nipper/saw for awkward bits. What might be tricky would be if your walls need replastering to make good where the tiles were, which I don't think is a DIY job personally. Tiling is very expensive per square metre to have done, but you can buy some lovely tiles for around 10 a metre. I like metro tiles more than any other, which isn't saying much, but large tiles are good in bathrooms as there are fewer grout lines for water ingress. I think sheet vinyl is a neat finish and has the added advantage of being quite cheap. We were quoted 150 to do our 3m by 2.5m en suite (in a white vinyl from carpetright), but in the end I used vinyl tiles. Which were awesome by the way, I've bought them for my utility and all the other bathrooms since laying the first lot. The black and white ones look particularly nice in a chequerboard pattern in our big family bathroom with the cast iron bath.

Plumbing is easy. I don't touch electrics past replacing the odd light switch and fitting, but plumbing is just like lego. Especially with push fit piping and compression joints. I think copper compression is slightly more fool proof than pushfit, but I use both fairly happily. You just have to remember that you will always need to tighten stuff up a bit, check and double check for tiny leaks, never lose your washers (v important) and have someone else to hand to turn on the water again so you can check you don't have a massive leak straight away.#

This sounds like a big braggy post, but if you are on a tight budget, but have time and are committed to finding the best deals, you can do it. It's a bit of a slog sometimes (especially when you have a whole house to sort out) but for us, it's the only way it can happen. We literally cannot afford to give our builders any more money, so if stuff is getting fitted, we are doing it. Once you have the tools and the experience, you can do it all again too.

PS we have a shower/bath mixer with a little holder on the wall for the shower head. We have super water pressure, and don't bother with a mixer as we shower over the bath in that room. Does make life a bit easier. I recycled our old one, but I think they only cost 10 or something.

Comme ca

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Chrome-Bathroom-Hand-Held-Mixer-Shower-Head-Holder-Bracket-Wall-Fixture-HD-10-/251291586482

Like everyone else says it's the labour that is the killer.

In our last house we ripped out the bathroom following advice on the internet, but we are competent DIYers. And we installed a new suite ourselves, including flooring. We have a mate who is a plumber who we got advice from (lives 100 miles away) so couldn't show us, just talked to us about it all.

We then did our en-suite but that was floor to ceiling tiled to begin with, I stripped it all out and paid a plasterer to plaster all the walls. And we paid an electrician to fit an extractor fan and wire up the electric shower but we fitted everything else including the shower. I tiled it all, Dh laid the floor.

We work well as a team and I know that the en-suite for a shower enclosure, shower, tiles, tap, mirror, flooring, toilet, sink and plasterer came to £1800. And I did a lot of internet trawling to get the best deals.

I would save up for a bit to get more money behind you. There is nothing worse than making do when you would be thinking of what you could have had. I waited a few years to save for a kitchen extension and it is amazing. I would have hated to compromise on anything.

PJs comment on chipboard reminds me; once you are in, get the bath panel off and have a look. We didn't and only found out when we got round to doing the bathroom that the bath was sitting on chipboard that had been wet! How we didn't end up suddenly downstairs is beyond me.

also have a think about plastic shower panels; sounds naff but can look really good, and no grout to do or go mouldy!

Wow. Lots of tips, ta.

We were intent on getting a new bath. One day, i was having a soak and realised that the bath was in fact salvageable and it was the taps that made it look minging.

Our plumber scraped off the limescale and replaced the taps, waste and plug hole.

We do have a steel bath, so it is very hard wearing.

We damp proofed, retiled, corner bath, did floor, new sink and unit, all accessories, new windowsills, lights, new ceiling all for under 1k. Its dirt cheap if you do it yourself.

We also knocked wall through and made bathroom a lot bigger, new doors, made a new entry from living room to kitchen and sealed old up. All in with price.

we paid more than 3k for the materials alone (did most of the work ourselves).

but tiled all over, extra insulation, electrics (hotel hairdryer, shaver sockets), good quality taps (grohe),

Some excellent tips here Thank you I guess if we shop around and do as much as we can ourselves then we should be able to save quite a lot. Turns out my mum has done a lot of tiling which I didn't realise so should be able to rope in some help.