Bathroom quote - high or not?

[Equimum]

We live in the SE, but not London or immediate surrounds. We are looking for a full bathroom refit which will include removing existing partial tiling and sanitaryware, then overlaying tiling board, skimming some walls, fitting a shower, bath, sink & toilet, tiling floor and tiling shower area. There is some boxing in of pipes, but big items largely staying in same position. We will paint remaining walls. Bathroom is about 2.7m squared.

So, we have now had three quotes and they seem a bit higher than we had been led to expect. One company insists on supplying everything, and they quoted £11k, but the bath etc doesn’t look particularly expensive in their catalogue, so a lot of that is labour.

Other companies are happy for us to supply ‘items that are seen’. One quote of £5.5k and one at just under £5k.

Are these what you would expect, or do they seem a bit high? In general conversation, everyone seems to think a bathroom cost about £5-6, but obviously these quotes will put it quite a way over that.

TIA for your opinions.

Our bathroom re-fit coast about 5.5k. This included all new white suite (shower over bath), enlarging the airing cupboard, re-tiling and re-flooring plus a new window. The horrible artex ceiling was also skimmed. We did the decorating ourselves. I thought this was a fair price, so 11k does sound steep.
Our builder did warn us that you can sometimes find horrors under baths/loo's, where small leaks for years have damaged joists, which can push the price up considerably, but fortunately this was not the case.

We paid £12k for our bathroom refit.

Today I've just posted about my leaking fucking shower. Not the first thing to go wrong.

We were ripped off - sounds like you might be too given it's vastly more than the others.

Oh, and our company insisted on supplying everything too.

I would expect circa £6k. In the Midlands.

We paid 3.5k for new bathroom , fairly small ,all retiled everything in same position didn't include flooring.

Think it all sounds expensive - you could do a college plumbing course, get your IEE 18th Edition electrical certificate, do a course on tiling - and away you go!

(But then I come from an era of DIY)

Are you having gold plated taps?

Thanks everyone. I would hope so, Ariela, but alas, no, just standard taps!

fashionable taps and showers can be remarkably expensive. I like Bristan and around £5k would be normal with standard tiles but excluding flooring and plastering.

What make of stuff are they quoting?

A good reinforced bath looks the same as a cheap one, but costs four times as much.

I prefer to use a plumber, and an independent plasterer and tiler, and source the stuff. You may need a chippy for the floor and door. This is more work, so if you pay a main contractor, you're paying for their knowledge, contacts and markup. Bathroom and kitchen fitters are usually good at one thing, and not so good at everything else.

High street glossy showrooms for kitchens and bathrooms charge much more for the stuff than plumbers merchants.

We paid £11k (south east) for bathroom refit plus downstairs toilet refit, including skimming ceilings, new lights, moving taps to other end of bath, mid-range fitting and taps that cost about 10times what I expected!! (We went thro Bathstore who also arranged fitting).

Thanks again everyone.

Piglet, we are, ideally, going to source our own stuff. I don’t actually know the make of the things that were included in ‘all-in’ quote, as it just came through with style name, and an attached picture from a catalogue. We did have Wickes out to get an initial quote, and that was about £8k for everything apart from plastering, tiling, decorating etc., but the stuff was clearly not of good quality. We then decided against the Bathstore, as a lot of their products were clearly the same as items we found online, but with a considerable mark-up.

Piglet, does it get really complicated managing the process yourself? My concern is that, if someone doesn’t my turn up, it puts the whole thing out, and could end up taking much longer. We only have a toilet and sink downstairs, so I don’t want the bathroom to be out of action for too long.

Thanks again.

That is high. Just labour? I’m also in the SE and am getting quotes for a very similar job. 3 have come in under 4K for labour (+ flooring). Prob go up to 7K inc materials (I have expensive tastes ) but 5K+ for just labour for the jobs you’ve listed seems high, especially as no real plumbing involved.

We're in East of England our two bathrooms, family and en suite were £17k for a complete refurb, moving things around, knocking a wall out and rebuilding etc. The company did it all and all items came through them except tile. It was so much easier and the finish is impeccable. I didn't do this in my kitchen and it was a disaster. I managed it and the other trades were ok but fitter was horrible and it bothers me every time you go in there. So view their work first whoever you choose.

Other benefit of an all in one company was it was easy to get them back for snagging where kitchen guy disappeared...

But yes £11k sounds a little high as ours were £8.5k each for fairly expensive fittings and great workmanship.

We paid £5.5k - but very little was being changed layout wise (one radiator moved and changed)... fully tiled so all that to strip out, walls to fix from the fact most of the plaster came down with the tiles and re-fully tiled and new everything down to the pull cord to turn the light on.

Midlands but very much a company who got your budget and planned/specced to that rather than one of these "hear your budget and whack another £3k on the top" ones. Had quotes ranging from 9k down to 5k.

Just having ours done. Said we wanted to choose new fittings in person, not from brochure etc. Company recommended a bathroom showroom locally - it is in fact the only one for many miles. We were horrified at the prices and ended up ordering from Victoria Plum who were very good, and at about a third of the cost of the equivalent locally (in fact better we think and with 10 yr guarantee etc).

7k in Southampton and it included plastering, tiling etc and we used their fitters (glad we did as something went wrong which they were able to sort out in 12 hours. )