Where to start with bathroom renovation?

[Wollstonecraft1]

We only have about £5k to spend which sounds like a huge amount to me but probably isn't. What do we need to consider? We won't be moving anything but ceilings need plastering etc and new lights will need fitting I think. I want a power shower fitting too.

Where do we start? And where should we get the suite from? We are clueless! And how long should it take? It is our only bathroom so the quicker the better!

We spent 5k on ours although my husband fitted new spotlights himself (he is an electrician)

We got quotes from wickes and local guy and went with Wickes as they had better availability. They weren't great. Their fitters were fine but too many errors with items turning up late/wrong etc.

We sourced everything ourselves, tiles from somewhere online, bathroom from Victoria Plumb online, floor from local flooring place, lights from. B and Q, new window from local window suppliers and then found a bathroom fitter to fit it all. By far the cheapest way. Spent about 2.5k in stuff and 1.5k on fitting.

Oh we also found a separate plasterer to plaster and paint the ceiling (all walls were fully tiled). The tiles we found online by the way were exactly the same as some we saw in wickes but were almost 50% cheaper online.

5k will be quite a budget bathroom. I'd start off with a plan - do you want a bath with shower over or separate, 1 or 2 washbasins, storage etc all that. Once you have measured everything up and planned properly, you can start looking for your white goods, tiles and other materials. Online retailers offer the best value for money and for washbasins with drawers underneath I'd recommend Ikea (cheap, maximise storage and last forever).

To save money, do work yourselves if you can or hire individual trades. In terms of timescales, while 5 days is doable for 2 people being efficient, I'd expect 2 weeks under average circumstances.

What kind of property do you have? We had our bathroom done in a Victorian House. High ceilings meant we could have a false ceiling for lights.

What state are the walls?

£5k should be enough but you might have to use a seperate trades not one firm

We got ours done in December. Started off with wish list of what we wanted, then got a couple of local fitters round to chat through our ideas and then quote. They both had preferred suppliers they recommended, but we could have sourced our own suite if we'd wanted to. Both quotes were around 5.5k.

We upped the spec a bit and came in at 6k in the end, that covered:
Pull down old ceiling and replace with new including LED lights
Replace window and make good external render
Remove existing tiles on 2 walls and retile (needed to reboard 1 wall too as was very wonky!), reskim other 2 walls and paint
Replace extractor fan
Replace external soil stack
Remove flooring, install electric UFH, tile
Remove old suite and replace with new suite and fitted furniture
Remove old radiator and replace with towel radiator
Fit new shower and screen
Fit large mirror

I designed it myself (small bathroom so not many options!)

Took just under 2 weeks - could have been faster but it's our only bathroom so he reconnected toilet every night and all except 1 night reconnected the bath.

I love it so much, worth every penny not to lie in the bath glaring at the old artex ceiling and manky soil pipe behind the toilet! I love how there's storage for everything now so no shampoo bottles on the windowsill!

Ooh watching with interest as I'm looking at a very similar budget for a similar reno. Problem is I'd like to rejig the layout which I know will be expensive and I've no real experience at DIY (but then that might be too big a project anyway) 🤔

Thanks all. As with everything the costs are always so much higher than you think they should be!

Property is 80s, so exposed soil pipe etc which has to go!

Miaow, how much did your new one cost? Ours isn’t as bad as yours sounded but it does need an overhaul.

90s property, small family bathroom, we got quoted 10k by shop. Bought the stuff purselves and local bloke doing - just over 3k. New suite, shower, tiles, all in. 6 days work.
We didn’t want anything special but it’s all nice.

Ours was a little under your budget due to shopping round.

We sourced our stuff (Victoria plumb, local plumbers merchant, IKEA, local flooring place) and plumber fitted it.

He was happy to advise on quality of things and works with other trades so sourced the guy to fit the wall boards in the shower and the flooring and he did everything else.

No tiling to do but we did move bath, sink and toilet!