Bathroom

[SirVixofVixHall]

My bathroom needs a total overhaul. It has ugly, very dated tiling, the washbasin has a hair line crack, the paint is hideous and shiny which shows every flaw in the old walls underneath. The bathtub is a sort of plastic resin, ball and claw feet but not a metal tub. The loo is ok ish but looks cheap. So it all needs to be replaced.
Small bathroom. Things not ideally positioned either . So - how much is a rough estimate to get it looking nice ? I don’t want a contemporary flashy bathroom, my house is an 1820s cottage so it needs to be appropriate to the rest of the interior.
Walls - they are shiny paint over lining paper, does it all need to be stripped off ?
Floor - painted floorboards at the moment, any ideas here ? I like lino but the rest of the house is all floorboards, maybe the edge would look strange and lino needs a very flat substrate I think ?
Tiles at the moment are around the bath up to a certain point, and above the washbasin. They all need to come off, what happens then to the walls underneath ?
I am practical and good at painting and delicate things, I wonder if I can do any of this myself ?

You could definitely do a lot of the taking off and out yourself but do you have a second bathroom to use whilst doing it?

Yes to paper coming off but don't worry about the state of the walls too much if you are going to fully tile over (as long as plaster isn't crumbling)

You can put a thin plywood down over floorboards then Lino, I've done that in a terraced 1900 house

Budget around £5k I would say

Thank you for your advice. No second bathroom. We do have an outside loo, in the garden.
£5000 sounds ok. The tiles seem very thick, I think they may be stuck onto some sort of board - I don’t want any tiles at all really, thought I might just have t&g up to a dado. Not sure what to do around the basin though.
A lot of condensation in there too, it gets mouldy easily. It really is tatty and we have delayed tackling it during the pandemic as we haven’t wanted anyone in the house . I just want it done now. We have hit that point where we need to put a chunk of money into redecorating as everything is looking tired, but the bathroom is way beyond tired !

If you don't like tiles you could do a glass splash back
Or for next to the bath/shower there is special waterproof boarding you could go for

Fitting will probably be £2k, have you checked any bathroom sites for ideas on fittings?

We are having a lovely man round to look at ours from a local independent who would do the total end to end work. We want it all out, stripped down to bare walls then redone from scratch but no plumbing moved as the fundamental layout is good. It would be mid range fixtures and fittings. They've told me ball park budget for all of this would be around 10-12k plus vat.

So if you sourced your own fixtures/found bargains/did some yourself I reckon you could basically halve this. We are definitely paying for them doing the project management/co-ordination so if you take that on then that will cut it down loads. My mum did all the tiling in the various bathrooms they had over the years and it always looked flawless.

Oh, our guy also said prices had gone up by a good 40% due to Covid/Brexit. We were also meant to get ours done a couple of years ago but it's our only bathroom too and kept putting it off. He told me if we'd have come in this time in 2019 the ballpark would be 6k!

40% . Why the huge leap in cost ?
I am going to try to do as much as possible myself, all the stripping etc, and all the painting. If I have wallpaper I might not do that myself as I haven’t ever done it, although a friend does all hers and says it is easy …. Will need someone to fit everything properly though, and to do the T&G if I have that. In an old cottage with irregular walls etc, it is never going to look flawless and would look strange very modern and immaculate, so that cute me some slack anyway !

Cuts me , not cute.

Had ours done in September
£10k
Total revamp of a cheap nasty B&Q bathroom, took bath out (never used), moved toilet, moved shower, 2 walls full tile, I half tile, 1 no tile.
Large upright radiator
New Extractor fan
Moved electrics to landing
We used cushioned non slip lino
It looks great

I love my bathroom, but it probably wouldn't suit your cottage. If I had a cottage, I'd go for a cabinet that suits the style of the house with a sink on top of it. I'd leave the floorboards. I'd put in a nice shower & etc I'd save up for & look at reclamation yards for a goid quality free standing bath, depending on the style of the cottage put wood panelling (painted) around the bottom of the walls & paint above it.

I'd allow for £10k given how much stuff has gone up.

Where can I buy good quality quarry tiles and also brass taps, shower heads and grab rails etc at a cheaper price.

I am also looking for traditional bathroom ware and cabinets.

I am also looking for solid wood flooring, haven’t found anything I like.

I am also looking for a new kitchen company, but I want wood with wood interiors and disabled friendly.

I live in Birmingham.
.BM63.

I've just done two bathrooms. First about £5-6k, spending about £1000 on the sanitary ware, £500 on tiles. The rest was tiling, plumbing, electrics, sorting out the floor, plastering and decorating.
I had another done for £10k as all the plumbing was moved. Tiles were quite expensive too.
It will take much longer than you think - three and a half weeks in our case, though a friends took five!

Five weeks !
I don’t think we have room for a shower, we’ve never had one. Maybe if we had the airing cupboard moved onto the landing. So bath, washbasin, loo. I think they could be better placed in the room but it sounds as though that adds thousands?