New bathroom and also carpets - ballpark figures for a novice please!

[WhetherFourCast]

We really need our bathroom redoing - new suite, pipes boxing in, new floor, panels (or tiles) on the wall - basically starting again. I have no idea how long this would take to do - two weeks maybe? This is the first time we will have had a new bathroom .

We also need new carpet in 3 x bedrooms, stairs and landing - typical 1930's semi size. No idea how much carpet that is or how much it costs to fit. I assume we need new underlay too.

I have absolutely no idea of how much this might cost. We are an IKEA+ kind of family, so not Argos budget, but not John Lewis either.

Can anyone who has had this sort of work done recently give me an idea of how much it cost and if that was low, mid, high budget kind of thing? I am really wary of getting people in to quote who are way above our budget, but at the same time, we don't want to do it on the cheap. We are SE if that helps.

Thanks in advance!

We have just had our bathroom done and it was just under 6k all in. I sourced all the bathroom items and tiles etc..... and then they did the labour and the cost of the pipework and plaster (ceiling needed plastering).

Thank you again.

Yes, the furniture is worrying me. Do the rooms have to be empty or can you do half a room at a time? We have six tall IKEA pax wardrobes between the bedrooms, plus big beds. Eek.

The bathroom sounds like we are looking at 5-6K. Seems a lot for what is a small space (room is about 6ft long and as long as a bath wide), but I don't expect we will do it again! Any hot tips for things to do/avoid/where to go for stuff?

The fitters grumbled, but we emptied all the drawers, but none of the furniture could come out, it just had to be moved about. They want an empty room, but it simply isn't possible in many cases. And certainly not when you are doing multiple rooms!

Our small bathroom (2 bed house) was about 7k in the end although I got 10% discount on some of the items and installation. We went through Wickes and sourced other items ourselves through drench.com as Wickes had a limited range. Tip is to ask the designer who is the most popular/most ocd installer and don't go for the one who has quickest availability. Ours were absolutely shocking and it took almost 3 months to property complete, (should have taken about 3 weeks i think) as there were snagging issues. in the end, they did fix them to our satisfaction or wickes sent in other contractors to fix other issues. My sister and parents have always used wickes with no problems though. it all depends on the installer.

Re carpets make sure you spend on the best underlay (about £10pm) Tredaire Dreamwalk is very good for stairs as it doesn't compact. We went for a rubber one for the bedroom before we discovered that one though. We chose luxury feeling deep pile carpet for the bedrooms and the same colour but the short pile version for the landing and stairs so they blended well.

Our bathroom was about 6k. Old tiles off walls, replastered, rip up vinyl floor and replace with tiles, new toilet, new bath/shower unit, boxing in of pipes, new light fitting. We painted the newly plastered walls ourselves.

HilaryBliss sounds ike a goo value! Would you mind sharing which company you've used? It's so important not to go with the 'cowboys' - I once had a seemingly established company completely mess up the tiling and although I didn't pay the total, I've lost my deposit and had to find asomeone else.

I bought our whole bathroom suite from Wickes for £250. Then had someone fit and tile it & all in for that was around £800 including the tiles. I did the floor myself.

Carpet, we did the hall/stairs and the single bedroom and it was £800. But we got top of the range underlay which I think is an absolute must for that sort of high traffic area and the underlay was almost as much as the carpet.

Carpet: 3 rooms, 2 stairs, 2 landings £1200 - good quality carpet & best quality underlay. Used a family owned local company, the chains are a rip off. We made sure every room/area was empty so fitting was really cheap.

Bathroom we gutted everything ourselves, had the room fully replastered for £600, professionally tiled 5sqm for £150, painted it myself, then sourced new bath, loo, sink, shower screen for £400ish, new lino floor was £50 and DH fitted the floor and bathroom suite himself after watching YouTube vids.

All in, around £2600ish. Labour is so expensive we try and do as much as possible ourselves but it is stressful and takes a lot longer than professionals.

I have been doing work on my house in the last few weeks, outskirts of London. Count on more like £250/day for labour, i.e. £30 per hr

Also been pricing a bathroom & carpets for 2 bed stairs & landing

Re budget - there is a price you really could not go below (I'd expect that to be 5-6K all in for the bathroom, 1.5K for the carpets) - with decent but budget stuff (ie a Wickes bathroom, not loads of fancy add ons, and carpet at £12 m2 or therabouts, so not supercheap but not luxury), but you can definitely go higher!

I would suggest you take your budget, work backwards, and think what is most important to you. Here, I'd say a quality bathroom is more important than carpets, as this affects your resale, and if decent could last 15-20 years

Carpets - should prob last 10 years or so in a family home. You might choose to go lower grade & replace sooner (I had beautiful carpet in my last place, but will go cheaper this time to replace sooner).

Get the bathroom done first as that may generate dust & ruin your carpets, & also if you run out of money you can buy cheap carpet and replace in a couple of years whereas you can't do that with a bathroom