How did you finance your bathroom refurb?

[bottomofthefoodchain]

I have recently bought my flat and I am desperate to get the bathroom gutted and start again. But with one thing and another, I won't reach my target budget of £3.5k by when I had hoped (August). I'll probably be able to save about £1800 towards the cost by then.

What is the best way to proceed do you think? Should I buy all the parts/materials on finance (would need to be pretty much all from one place then) and pay the labour in cash? (This might take an extra month or two of saving ). Or use cash to buy the parts/materials and take out a loan for the labour? I really don't want to have to spend much longer saving up as it's an embarrassment as it is!

What did others do? (If you weren't fortunate enough to pay it all in hard cash).

Is it really that bad? Personally I don't think it's a good idea to take on debt. Can't you do a few minor cosmetic things (lick of paint, few decent accessories etc) until you have saved the money. As long as it is clean and functions as a bathroom, what is the urgency?

Quite bad. Hole in the ceiling, sink not properly attached, shower broken. By the time I fixed all that and gave it a basic makeover, it would be a big chunk of money that could be better spent. Now that I have a mortgage instead of rent, I'm better off financially, so I can afford decent repayments over a year or so. I just can't face waiting that long to get it done by cash.

You could get it on buy now, pay next year interest free? I know bathstore do that from time to time. That way you can save for that part and by the time it's time to pay you'll have the money and won't have to pay interest

That doesn't sound good. I hope you got money off your purchase price to cover the poor state of the facilities. Good luck anyway.

Victoria plumb do interest free credit. I'd get fittings on that and pay for the labour with cash saved.

You're going to be well short though... you'd be lucky to get the labour for a bathroom for 1.8k and you have to buy tiles, flooring, fittings, extractor fan etc.

VictoriaI got a discount as I bought the flat through RTB, so not due to the state of it, but still significant to me and my best option just now Lucisky

Kokusai I've priced the fittings, etc on the other Victoria Plum and can get those and tiles for approx £1k. Small bathroom and will only be partially tiling. As I say, if I go for paying the labour in cash, I'd give myself an extra couple of months saving.

I have it on Mumsnet authority that it's doable for £3.5k

But the suite on a zero percent credit card? But if it were me I'd wait until I'd saved up.

Get a builder to quote the labour before you do anything else. I would suggest that labour will be in the £2.5-£3k range. Add on £1k for fittings and makes your estimate the low end. It will be about 2.5-3 weeks of work if it all goes smoothly.

As for finance options if you absolutely can't wait get a personal loan from Sainsbury's or something like that. They're offering in the 2% region (I believe that if you tell them you're consolidating debt they give you a better rate). Spread over 3 years (let's assume you borrow £4K so you have some contingency) your repayments will be around £140/month, so you'll have the first 16 months payments already.

If you borrow £2.2k and pay the rest from your savings your monthly payment will be around £70/month (but leaves you with no savings).

If possible I would be inclined to borrow the full amount at a low rate and be prepared to lump sum pay it off if it seems you are able to handle the repayments. It gives you contingency for the job and also gives you contingency if something else goes wrong and you need that money (your boiler packs up etc.)

We're planning to add it to the mortgage. The interest rates better than a seperate loan . It's going to add value to the property anyway so isn't like using mortgage money for a holiday or car. Is that possible. I'm might feel better to have your debt in one place ?

Never tried this before but I would second 0% credit card. This what I intend to do very soon anyway. There are some cards with 31mths repayment period so looks like a better deal than a loan at 2%

If you are going to be able to repay it a zero % CC isn't a bad idea. I used one to buy my bathroom fittings and then when the renovation threw up issues and went over budget I shifted some of my 'normal' spending onto th my CC to free up cash to pay the builder.

if you want to card tart make sure your builder takes CC payments- many don't, or they add on a few % anyway which might as well come from interest.

On a small loan with low interest you're paying v. little interest anyway (around £20/year) and you know exactly what your payments will be month on month (I find fixed loans easier to repay than a low rate CC).

I would definitely advise zero interest credit card then you can shop around for your fittings. Only if you know you can easily pay it off on time though. We did this when doing our kitchen - we had the savings but for various reasons decided we would like to keep those and use the cc and then know we had the money tucked away anyway. Only time we have 'done' debt but actually I thought it worked well. I set up a standard order of £200 a month to pay it back. I never used the cc again.

We have saved for our bathroom refurb though that we also plan to do in August, our circumstances were just a bit funny at the time we did the kitchen.

Oh and to avoid the problem of the above - use the cc to pay for fuel/groceries etc for a couple of months so you can save cash for the builder. Though it sounds like you have enough savings for that anyway.

Thanks all for the advice! Barefoot adding it to my mortgage would make if feel less like debt, definitely. But if in can get a loan at 2% that's cheaper than my 4% mortgage. Not sure I'd be able to add it to the mortgage anyway, as I've only made one repayment on it yet?

I'll definitely start investigating credit cards and the Sainsbury's loan once I've made a few more mortgage payments. (My credit score isn't great, wasn't even sure I'd get the mortgage as I defaulted on a credit card 5 years ago) But much better organised financially now.

Ahh in that case a cc mightn't be such a great idea, I think it only works if you can be mega disciplined. Maybe try and wait a bit longer, if the mortgage payments are new too, to see how you get on with those first? There can be a lot of unforeseen expense when you move.