Redoing bathrooms - tips and things to avoid

[JustOneShake]

We are finally renovating bathrooms and I've been to a few showrooms to get a feel for function and aesthetics of showers, enclosures, etc. I have to say, I am totally overwhelmed with the choice out there, for all budgets, so just wanted to know if anyone has done recently, anything you wished you had known beforehand, any particular brands that are brilliant for product and after sales, anything you wouldn't do without. Any tips or anything that we should definitely avoid.

Defo don’t get a comfort toilet if you are 5’4” or less. Your legs will dangle and that’s not an optimum position. It’s really annoying. Yes to the grey grout. And I wouldn’t fully tile as it makes it look like a public toilet and is a pain to change as inevitably it will need done when styles changes at least every 8-10 years.

@countmeout

Totally agree, my in-laws have one and it's horrible, I'm about 5'6". Can't get comfortable at all!

Small, neat battery operated motion sensor light on window sill/toilet cistern/cupboard top, removes the need to put noisy light/extractor fan on in the wee small hours.
You just have to wave your arms about a bit if you are a slow urinater!

Have flicked through their thread but haven’t read it all, so apologies for any repetition. We have done three bathrooms now in our house, so have learnt a few things along the way.

Spend money on taps, shower and toilets. Brands like Grohe, Hansgrohe are great. Duravit are brilliant for toilets and if having a wall hung or concealed cistern toilet then Geberit are the best. Our bathroom fitter said he has never been called back for a Geberit cistern but is almost always called back when they’re not.

You can go quite cheap on the Bath, shower tray, shower glass etc. I bought a lot of those things off eBay. Get the biggest shower tray you can if having a standalone shower.

We did a mid grey grout, great, looks lovely and dark when wet and looks clean when dry.

Controls away from the shower.

We bought a lot of stuff from Victorian Plumbing, had no issues. But I also bought branded things discounted on eBay or ex display etc such as Duravit toilets. I didn’t buy a duravit for the kids bathroom and regret it as it seems so cheap and rubbish in comparison.

I personally didn’t like the floating loos but I do like the ones with completely straight sides, ie no dust gathering recessed at the side.

I agree about having a hand shower in the shower area if not over a bath. So much easier for cleaning and rinsing down.

If you can fit it a double sink is great! And plenty of storage.

Drawers under the sink instead of a cupboard are fantastic. Don’t get a concealed cistern toilet as they break and then you have to get tiles off the wall to get at the flush mechanism. Get a toilet with a normal-looking oval seat - I bought the cheapest toilet in the showroom as it was the only one with a normal seat even though the salesman tried to tell me replacing square seats was easy - you can see from this thread that it isn’t easy! The flush mechanism broke twice but was easily replaced and the toilet was fine and it was a normal-shaped bowl so no poo shelf either. I agree with PPs on underfloor heating - loved ours. We moved house and I miss our old bathroom so taking note of advice here for when we get to do up ours!

Underfloor heating - bliss.
Big walk in shower so you can have a glass panel and avoid any sliding doors.
Think about where you want to spend money and where you can save... we spent a lot on a really big stone resin shower tray. Acrylic would have been cheaper but I didn't want a plasticky flimsy feel. We also went for shower panels to avoid scrubbing tiles and grout- but we went for top of the range panels as the cheaper ones look nasty.

Buy a proper bathroom radiator NOT a heated towel rail and get the largest one for the room. Take BTU output seriously. Won't be making these mistakes with my other bathroom

So many wise pieces of advice here, especially with the fans, heating, grout and black floor tiles in a hard water area! Plus dont hide your shower fittings in the wall - if theres a leak it all has to come out, be fixed and then retiled.

Engage the best plumber, not just a jobbing plumber but a master plumber. Word of mouth is best way to find them and you will have to wait for them to fit you in. But, having had a regular plumber versus a master work on my different bathrooms, the outcome was night and day! Master all the way! They will point out things you never even considered and will future proof your work.

Water shut off valves. Put them in, more than you think is necessary, super in a leak situation!
Aesthetically, less is more, clean lines and bucket loads of storage. The more hidden storage you can have the better.

Extractor fans or, ideally a window.
Go to showrooms, go to open houses, go to anything where you can look at bathrooms in situ..,figure out from there what you don't like. It makes choosing g much easier.

I’d thoroughly recommend underfloor heating. We installed this, plus double heated towel rails, and it made a cold 70s bathroom extension really cosy. We are currently in rented & it’s absolutely horrible stepping onto freezing cold tiles in the morning.

Lots of storage under the sink. Victorian pedestal sinks are for masochists. Avoid any MDF/particle board on the sink surround surface as it will rot within the year unless you continually obsess with keeping it dry. Either full ceramic or some kind of stone is best.

Avoid a central mixer tap if you like to wash your hair over the sink!

I'll be installing a new bathroom in my new house, so this thread is invaluable.

I will definitely be getting a huge standalone shower plus screen, not doors. The sliding shower doors in my last house were awful to get clean in the middle, and the outward opening door where we're staying now drips water all over the floor!

I'll be looking into resin shower trays mentioned above, as one of my DC has SEN, and is unsteady on her feet, so anything which makes the floor less slippery sounds great.

For some unknown reason to do with choice fatigue we went for separate basin taps rather than a mixer in the family bathroom. The temperature of the hot water is lethal. When I can be arsed I’ll get that changed….

Why are drawers better than cupboards?

@AwkwardPaws27

We went for just a walk in shower room upstairs (stole a bit of a bedroom) but we are keeping the downstairs bath. Everyone's different but personally I would be gutted if we didn't have room for a bath. It's also brilliant being downstairs as we have a mud-loving dog.

Where are your sink / toilet cupboards from please? They look fab!

@Justcannotbearsed

For some unknown reason to do with choice fatigue we went for separate basin taps rather than a mixer in the family bathroom. The temperature of the hot water is lethal. When I can be arsed I’ll get that changed….

Separate taps all the time! Can’t stand dodging the central mixer tap just to use the sink!

Also, hot water temperature - if you have a combi boiler there should be a dial for the hot water temp on it ?

Having recently redone our bathroom (ourselves) my tip is to go for shower wall panels rather than tiles...there are some awesome patterns out there (ours resembles grey stone bricks). It looks amazing, is easy to install, warmer than tiles and easy to clean!

Also, we had a truly horrendous experience with Victorian Plumbing... their quality is fine but they've deliberately removed all customer service phone numbers meaning that when there is a problem there is no possible way to speak to them (they have ano online chat where you get given promises about phone calls that never happen) - I finally tweeted the hell out of them which sparked a response, but still not very satisfactory.

I am following this thread as our over 20 year old bathrooms are looking tired and dated.

Like another PP I would be worried that wall mounted toilets weren't strong enough. This isn't an issue for DH and me, but some of our guests are on the rather large side.

Our heated towel rail is plumbed into the hot water system so it heats up even in summer when we don't have the heating on.

We have lived in this house for 18 years and still have the original Grohe shower, which works perfectly. We had to have the pump replaced, but everything else is still in perfect working order. So I would agree that the quality is excellent.

My bathrooms are the bain of my life - they were so disappointing after the money I spent on them - they need to be so very practical and I think quite often the new designs are not.
I was advised to spend a lot on toilets and they needed to work quite hard - I bought GSI and Laufen - both have let me down on the toilet seat element. Chrome fittings are unable to withstand a normal toilet wipe and have pitted - get stainless steel if you can. The GSI seat buffers were utterly useless and continued to need replacement every 6 months - they are now made of rubber rather than plastic so it's now every couple of years - they are not cheap a new toilet seat for either brand is close to £150 (and the loo itself was £500 and they are shit quality. Not one of us weighs more than 11 stones, they got no abuse. Another thing about toilet seats is they are designed really badly - rarely solid now and have too many nooks and crannies so cleaning is a bloody nightmare and involves small brushes and the plastic is soft so stain remover is frequently needed. Old fashioned toilets were so much better, the cheap B&Q loo we used to have was so much better. Yes to hanging sinks and loos on the wall if you can. Our Duravit sink overflow cover was made of plastic and broke (unsurprisingly).
I'd think about the layout in terms of what your door opens onto. One of our doors opens to the towel rail and because we put underfloor heating in, we can't screw a doorstop to the floor so we have to be really careful when opening the door - another bathroom door opens to a wall and again we can't screw a doorstop to the wall - but we found a heavy weighed doorstop - that works in that situation.
Do not put a plain floor in that will show up hairs and water stains, get a sample tile if you can and leave it in your bathroom to see how easily it looks grubby.
Tank your floor if you can afford it - every one of our bathrooms leaked, it would have saved us money in the long run and it's not uncommon.
Get a good tiler - even do it yourself, if you have any experience in this area you will do a more careful, watertight job with time and patience, which most tilers lack - a good tiler is so hard to find. And tile all your surfaces.
Do not let your installer choose your extractor - invest in a really good one - we had to replace all of ours (they were noisy and ineffective) and the upgraded version wasn't even that much more expensive - about £30 more - but the labour costs were.
And think about storage of bleach and toilet brushes and if you are getting a shelf in the shower make sure the builder put it in on a slant so it doesn't hold water - we put a little LED in ours, and LEDs on the floor around the bath - give a candlelight effect and is good for night time with kids.

We put in a digital shower which also controls the bath mixer, and we put the controls about halfway down the long wall. It makes them easier to operate when going in to bathe a small child as well as keeping them away from the worst of the water splashes.

Our basin is set in a drawer unit with a concealed top drawer inside; so much extra storage, and still wall hung so the floor is easier to clean. The loo is wall mounted inside a wooden frame with a slab front that matches the basin drawer and the wall mounted cupboard. So, if we ever need to access the cistern we don't have to rip off tiles, just ease out the sealant and move the wood.

But the loo has a non standard seat shape and after the lid broke, it's been nigh on impossible to find a replacement.

I wish we had put in underfloor heating. The room is fully tiled, with matt tiles on the floor and the same design in a slightly glossier finish on the walls. I still love this look.

We were laying an independent plumber to fit it all so it made sense to also pay for high quality fittings and only need the job doing once. It has lasted well. I think "diy shed" fittings would have failed by now. We used a local independent supplier and a recommended plumber and were very pleased with both.

Drawers are good because they pull out and you can see all the stuff you’ve shoved in there at once, instead of having things hiding behind each other.
Don’t get textured wall tiles. The previous owner installed them here and hair and dust sticks to the texture and you have to wipe the whole wall all the time to get rid of it.

We've done two bathrooms since we moved in. For both we went to a showroom and chose everything from the one place. We wanted one firm to do absolutely everything so that if there was an issue we wouldn't be passed around between different tradespeople. It also meant that each one was fully completed in four days, that's start to finish, the whole room stripped absolutely bare, no hanging around waiting for a separate tiler/ electrician/ plumber/ floor layer.

We went for high-end panels instead of tiles, on each wall plus the ceiling. Hardly any grout to clean, just round the base of the shower tray/ the edge of the bath. The panels are slightly insulated so they're warm to the touch, also avoids condensation that you can get with cold tiles and a hot shower.

Karndean floor, looks like tiles but warmer, very easy to clean.

Towel rails dark grey powder coated, I'm hoping they will stay in better condition than our previous chrome ones which developed little rust spots at the back.

One thing I would change is the shape of our basin in the main bathroom. It's slightly square and we live in a hard water area, the angular shape means the water doesn't drain 100% like a circular basin, so I'm forever wiping it down to try and avoid the sitting water on the flat parts causing streaks.

Ask the plumber to fit a thermostatic mixer valve, preferably close to the boiler, it ensures that nobody can scald themselves on hot water.

Insulate with rock wool or similar between the bath and panels and wall etc. Water stays hotter for longer.

I've got absolutely nothing to add, but there are so many amazing ideas here that I'm place marking for when I get the bathroom re-done next year. Sorry!