Change bathroom before selling or not?

[Penguinpandarabbit]

We moved out of our house which is close to London and have already moved to a different area. We want to sell (or failing that rent out) our old house. It's a Victorian house, value around £650k.

Rest of house will be in good condition, replacing flooring and doing some painting, really nice kitchen and living area. Bathroom is small and there's just one. It's a white suite with light green/grey swirly tiles which I hate and to me look dated but they are tiles you don't notice that much.

I think we need to replace bathroom and DH doesn't. I am happy to find a cheaper solution but not if it will make house not sell. We can compromise on price but want to sell. Houses like ours in good condition seem to be selling but couple of houses on market requiring renovation seem to be sticking, however, they also appear way overpriced too and one is modern, one the location isn't great and is 2 bed.

Issues with current bathroom are no shower over bath, bath panel is broken, tiles are dated though fairly non-descript, there is mold on tiles and underneath shower screen which doesn't come off easily. This is due to poor ventilation. Bathroom is small so even done up its not going to be the selling point of the house. Flooring is old vinyl. Toilet is new. Suite is white but bath is jacuzzi bath, the jacuzzi bit doesn't work and the silver button silver is coming off. Not sure when suite was installed - between 10 and 20 years ago. EA hasn't been round but said to DH not just to leave the bathroom and do everything else either do everything in house or nothing. We are doing everything else but DH has translated this to the EA agrees with me that we don't need to do the bathroom when actually I think EA thinks we do.

Any views / ideas on how to do this? Thanks very much. DH has agreed we need to get mold off but that's all we've agreed on - I am not sure its possible.

Thanks very much. I would much rather know now than after buying it though I still love it and need to resist urges to buy it. Both DH and I have very old fashioned taste and we are currently in thatched cottage from 1500 DH is French so he has more European traditional tastes. Though we have bathrooms indoors.

The rest of the house is traditional though fairly mainstream traditional and only put very tiny bits in that weren't neutral like fireplace tiles have little birds on them. We can find something more neutral though - would prefer traditional but some of the modern bathrooms I don't mind but we both hate gloss and brown. It needs to be very light in there as small and window is tiny. I do find it hard not to buy what I want but I need to remember its for sale. Hadn't thought about spills going under bath. Most of the other house seem to have Victorian suites in them, look expensive and they have baths in middle of room not dissimilar style to that one I showed.

I don't think DH is too keen on one I chose either he's probably thought about spills though he's a nightmare for choosing - he'll still be choosing in a year's time.

Is a bath like this better (you can choose taps):

simply-traditional.co.uk/burlington/product/arundel-cleargreen-bath

This is hopefully vanity unit:
simply-traditional.co.uk/burlington/product/burlington-edwardian-560mm-basin-free-standing-rectangular-cloakroom-vanity-unit/?attribute_pa_tap-holes=1-tap-hole&attribute_pa_furniture-finish=sand
Though which colour - not particularly attached to vanity unit and might be better with another brand that does 600 width but was struggling to find good ones.

Again I think it is a waste of your time and energy to do it, put it on the market at a price to reflect this. You are sending links to what you like but it is no longer about you, you need something neutral that has mass appeal if you are going down this route. You cannot second guess your prospective buyers taste.

If you both have old-fashioned taste, I think that should swing you away from refitting the bathroom for two reasons. Firstly, it increases the chances you'll pick something that others will want to change. And secondly, it increases the chances that there is already something in other rooms that you consider "done" but someone else would want to change. It makes it less likely that your buyers will consider it in turnkey condition except for the bathroom, so having this one room "undone" may not the sore thumb you worry it is.

I hope this doesn't sound rude. I don't want to knock your taste, it may well be an exquisite. But it's personal, and your market is not just "people like you". In my view a £500 vanity unit is not a sensible spend purely to sell. There's more than enough stress in buying and selling a house and moving. You don't need to add to it.

(however I do like that bath.)

Thanks - I know what you mean and its hard to tell without pictures. The downstairs was all done by professionals and is fairly plain and traditional. All solid oak floor, plain pale yellow walls in living room, we had chimney rebuilt and Victorian fireplace put in and have a big bay window. The kitchen is solid oak floors and worktop with Rangemaster cooker and cream painted shaker units. There are a few tiles which are blue and white - I did sneak the odd lavender in there so someone might change that but there's not many tiles. Its a very large kitchen. Everyone has always said wow to all our ground floor though you never know if they are just being polite but they aren't people known for being polite 😂 The bathroom is noticeably worse, I would be amazed if anyone didn't want to change it - the bedrooms we are redoing but they are top bedroom white walls, beige carpet, handmade white painted built in cupboards, window down to ground with views going several miles into London. Smallest room is beige carpet, white walls, blind with animals on it. First kids bedroom rock salt walls, oak floor and second kids bedroom pale blue walls, oak floor. Not 100% sure what doing with garden but flowers round edge and something low maintenance in middle. There's a massive shed in there with electrics and water. The houses by us all tend to be done up to very high standard. May get EA round as he will know local market. I know what you mean though and don't want to waste money.

Its just the two kids bedrooms we are doing, others are OK already.

Penguin to me that seems a very expensive cloakroom sized basin. Three tap holes in a tiny basin and detailed edges and rim just make it seem even smaller. With my practical hat on, I can’t imagine that being adequate for a family bathroom. Imagine 4 people using that daily. Toothbrushing, shaving.... It’s just not practical.
Having renovated a flat for sale last year in a challenging local market I do think you have to know which buyers you are trying to attract.
A family house with one bathroom needs a practical simple basin with a bit of storage and mixer tap, a simple steel bath, a shower with decent pressure (that overhead fixed shower head I imagine would be useless with a gravity fed system and would require a shower pump. I do think you could achieve a lovely fresh classically styled bathroom that doesn't alienate any buyers at about half the cost you’ve estimated with a bit of judicious shopping. Surely a win win! Save your ideas for your own family house.

That second bath you linked is better by far (although I’d go cheaper still!)

Second bath is much better - I would say that, it’s the same as ours! I bought all our sanitary ware from Victoria Plumbing, it’s perfectly adequate for a basic quick fix. You really don’t need to love it, it’s just to sell the house.

Thanks very much. They do them in a bigger size but would then only be able to get out of bath from the side as there would be only 5cm gap. DH thought it too small too. We could for a normal sink too but there's not really any space for storage - only other thing could do in put shelves on walls but I know I like to hide things. Showers I don't understand at all, don't understand differences so not sure what we need.

Storage in a bathroom is essential. However pretty a basin is I like it with space around the edges to rest stuff on (contact lens wearer) and storage below.

If you are thinking of doing the bathroom in order to sell you need to stop planning what you like and would choose and think more like a developer - there's no point if you personalise it to the point it costs you a fortune, doesn't have broad appeal and you don't get your money back.

The shower you linked to is a poor choice (I know because we have one!) because the fixed head gives a lack of flexibility - you can't wash only your hair over the bath with that design and you can't use the shower to rinse the bath out. The vanity unit is too small. Even with space constraints you should be able to fit a bigger basin than that for a family bathroom.

Thanks very much - great point about the shower. We would need a shower that you can rinse hair after bath as well as a shower, ideally want one all stainless steel/metal rather than plastic but no idea what we should go for on showers.

Re the vanity unit we are very tight on space - checked again and we have 65cm between the wall and end of bath so 60cm one is a max. I do like the Downtown Abbey Duck Egg one at Victorian Plumbing but company gets such bad reviews we veered away from using them and couldn't find anywhere else with 60cm vanity units that looked traditional and reasonable quality. Some of the cheap ones seem to leak from reviews.

I had no issue at all with Victoria Plumbing. They delivered exactly what I ordered when they said they would and everything is excellent quality. They’re good value for money too.

Do you have a wall above the sink? If so how about a mirrored cabinet above rather than a vanity, and just a normal sink?

Those mirrored cabinets hold loads and they tend to be 60cm. www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/decoration/bathroom-mirrors/

Again I would question whether something called "Downton abbey duck egg" is really aimed at buyers or it's more for you. White would be safer. If you want to use colour, do it with towels, bathmat and paint. It also has a really small sink for the size of the unit.

www.victorianplumbing.co.uk/york-traditional-bathroom-suite-1700-x-700mm

www.victorianplumbing.co.uk/monza-modern-round-thermostatic-shower-chrome

This is the kind of thing I’d be looking at. Clean, functional, so neutral there’s nothing not to like.

Thanks very much and great to have suggestions. I am keen on white, DH isn't but he likes cheap as long as it doesn't look cheap and that one looks good to me. Do you think quality would be OK?

I was initially really keen on Victorian Plumbing but reviews were 😱. But reviews for a lot of bathroom shops are bad unless you spend ££££ which there's no point to. We have loads of wall space - goes up to 10 foot or so - guess only issue might be banging head - bathroom width is around one bath and one door so tight on width. Certainly a cupboard over sink is possible. Some shelves over bath or on other wall might work if don't stick out too much. Will need to check width of that vanity unit but may need to change to sink with overhead cupboard but at least know what I should aim for now.

The vanity unit is right size perfect. What colour tiles would you put with it if we change tiles? Also white or a pale blue or something different? Thanks

Have a look at Johnson's Tiles' website. I bought tiles the same, colour and finish as Topps Tiles Attingham direct from the manufacturer at a huge saving. The difference was that the size is a Topps exclusive so the ones I bought direct were 10x30cm rather than 15x40cm.

The quality of fittings I bought from VP is fine. I’d probably go for white tiles with a thin line of something more interesting at the top or through the middle, say blue or turquoise.

Whatever you do, don’t buy waterfall taps, they’re shit!