£12,500 for a bathroom refurb?!?!?

[Mmmcheese89]

Small Victorian terrace bathroom in yorkshire. 3m x 1.9m.

Ripping out fully tiled, 3 piece bathroom suite.

Replacing with 3 piece bathroom suite plus electric shower. Tile around bath, back splash to sink and on floor. Skim plaster to everywhere else including new skim to ceiling. None of the appliances are changing location.

I've tried using local trades but they either ghost after they've seen the job or over price it because they don't want to do it. So I'm stuck going to b&q.

I'm not using very expensive materials (plain white tiles, simple suite), apparently it's getting the electric shower put in that's costing so much more than initially expected as fuse box is in the cellar, bathroom is two floors above and there isn't the existing cabling.

But there is no contingency for if they find anything troublesome underneath when they rip out the existing bathroom.

It has to be done. The bathroom is hanging on by a thread for being functional. And if I'm gonna do the thing I might as well do it properly and get what I want. Right?

sorry, this is mostly just sounding it out. Fml.

That seems about right, we had to have our bathroom redone after a flood from the flat above and the reinstatement cost around 12k not including the stripping out and drying.

Materials have tripled in price like everything else in the last couple of years.

Not in my experience! Our electric shower is excellent. Just make sure you clean the shower head regularly.

Just be aware that if you buy materials yourself then if there are any issues you’ll have to sort them. A colleague at work found this out the hard way. Bought tiles - didn’t get enough- thought the builder was ripping her off when he said she needed 12sqm - she measured 9 and bought 9 but didn’t allow for cuts. Then the tile shop said it would take 6 weeks to get another batch in and they would not guarantee they would be identical. Cost her hundreds..

That says more about BIL than anything else you need to know.

People that are genuinely good at what they do have morals and have no need to over charge.

as for the client, they clearly didn’t get like for like quotes or source their own kitchen, that’s foolish.

Maybe too far for them to travel, but these guys do full bathroom renovation/refits including tiling and so on. They won’t rip you off. it’s worth a call.

www.vanguardheat.co.uk

It’s crazy how much some tradesmen are quoting. I just got 2 quotes for some replastering, 3 walls including a large stair wall. One quoted me £4.5k and up to 5 days work. The other quoted £1k for the lot. We went for the cheaper one they were done in 2 days and the work is great. I honestly couldn’t believe we could have paid £4.5k and got the same result.

My quote was similar for same size but a more modern built bathroom. Question about an over the bath shower: does it mean the walls are tiled to the ceiling just over the bath area due to shower? I understand that the area of tiling required increases the cost significantly.

Yeah we were quoted 10k plus last year - in the end I bought the stuff myself from b&q

then pulled out the old stuff myself

got a well recommended local handyman who had done jobs for us before He was semi retired but does odd jobs

he’s not a qualified plumber but knew basics - we decided in the end to not take the bath out which saved a job - maybe in a few years do this

I did the tiles myself

got new Lino in from local floor shop

all in was leas than 4kincluding the decorating

we only got the decorating done yesterday as we couldn’t afford it - so nearly a year later so it still looked a bit crappy for a while

@Mmmcheese89 I'd advise against using B&Q. We've had a complete nightmare for a small shower room which should have been easy but the contractors were awful. Left us without a flushing toilet for over a week. Took nearly 4 weeks for completion. Majorly flooded within 2 months, that was 5 months ago and remedial works don't start until December. We've had to chase and fight the whole way for a cost of 17.5k. Ok we wanted splashwall which increased the cost a little but the actual bathroom only cost 6.5k. The rest was fitting and their cut. B&Q had to be fought before they took responsibility for their contractor. Not saying all B&Q contractors are like that. We've had a bad experience before by doing it on the cheap which is why we agreed to the ridiculous price, to have everything done professionally by what we thought was a reputable company and for us not to do a thing. Didn't work out that way. I'd wait for a good company or trade person.

Sorry for the typos and grammar...Still raging!

Sounds about what we paid. We were told that you can expect the labour to be the same price as the fixtures and fittings and it worked out to be that. I am assuming they will rip the old bathroom out and will need to hire a skip etc. That all adds up.

Tiny bit further north, and 4 years ago. We paid 9 5k BUT the shower runs off the boiler, and so no cabling costs there, and we didnt plaster the non tiled walls (they were painted, and stayed painted).
So sounds in the right ball park to me for a managed project.

If you want a plumber to do it, you'll need to wait til spring - they can fill their days with emergency boiler repairs and replacements for the next few months.

£12,500 is just crackers. Ask how much without the electric shower ?

And I hate it if they have other jobs on whilst doing yours as well. You want exclusive focus on your work, not half the team wandering off during the day to do someone else’s.

£17K in SW London for a 3 x 2.5m. £11k for labour, £6k actual bathroom material.

We had a fair bit of pipe moving to separate the bath and shower and move radiator, had new plasterboard and one spotlight added.

Quotes from B&Q and Wickes were ~£13.5k but these were for a very basic finish were and obviously had terrible reviews for fitting (this was a lowest possible quote; it’s likely when the fitters turned up that it would go up).

Labour only quotes ranged from £11k-£20k (not inc VAT 🤯). We’re a standard terrace so weren’t going for luxury heavy marble/heavy bath to move around.

More expensive than we anticipated but the lack of a huge expense gap between high street and boutique retailers meant we ended up with a beautiful bathroom rather than a basic one for a relatively small higher cost.

Our family have had 4 bathrooms refitted in past few years. Averaged 10k.

The cheapest was 8k but only had shower, unit, sink vanity and toilet. The radiator, extractor and lights remained. No bath. We had already ripped it out and disposed of everything as we intended to do it ourself until my husband hurt his knee.

We found a local bathroom fitting company that didnt have commission based salesmen and had their own plumbers and trades workmen. We had to wait 3 months but they did a grand job. A year later they did a second for us at 13k.

My daughter and father both bought their own parts and paid a fitter a day rate to refurb. They were a similar price in the end at 10k each although i think their materials were better quality - especially my fathers.

I had a bathroom and kitchen fitted by B&Q 20 years ago. One thing I will mention is you'll probably find it's one of the 'ghosting locals' who will turn up to fit it as they generally sub contract to locals.

I was and still am happy with the workmanship, both are still going strong, obviously not as modern looking as they used to be and white goods have been replaced but I'm still happy with them.

Totally irrelevant but just for comparison to see how much things have increased ridiculously over the years, both my kitchen and bathroom were totally ripped out, literally a blank canvas, fully fitted with all brand new integrated white goods etc and the total price was £10K....

Ours cost 10k 5 years ago, so that's probably not far off, it will depend on which suite you buy too, we went with Burlington including a back to wall roll top bath so not the cheapest fixtures. We also had electric underfloor heating, but our fitter was a friend of a friend so we got reasonable rates for what was delivered.

Kitchen last year cost 30k and it's not huge, we did have to go back to brick and rebuild the sub floor though

We had to replace an electric shower with standard due to low water pressure.

If the only reason for the electric shower is because your boiler is pants. Then change the boiler.

Sounds about right to me.

We tried Wickes and B&Q but their systems couldn’t cope with rooms that don’t have square corners.

This is eye opening. We had our bathrooms done about 10 years ago wiht the aim for it to last our lifetimes, and £15k was maybe the total cost of a new bathroom, a new shower room and a downstairs loo - not fancy, but good basic and I shopped arond for sales. Friends recently had their bathroom done for the amount you've been quoted, it's a smallish bathroom turned into just a shower room, but they did choose nice fittings. They went entirely independent. Costs are forever on the rise. I would only do this in a home I planned to stay in nfor the rest of my days.

I paid £17.5k per bathroom in London last year excluding the bathroom suites, tiles and paint which I supplied myself.

Getting any work done to houses now costs a fortune. I really should have married a handier man!

Yeah, we are selling our forever home earlier than expected, so if someone buys it they will get two virtually brand new bathrooms and a full set of internal doors chucked in! Not like it adds much to the value.

We’re in Berkshire and paid a local builder £5k last month to do ours, although it’s slightly smaller than yours and without an electric shower. They did everything except electrics and we ordered the skip, bought a mid range bath, shower, loo, vanity, taps, radiator and tiles ourselves for about £2.5k. We were either ghosted by a local companies, or quoted £20k and told that we had to order through their preferred supplier which was off putting and too expensive.

I am married to a very capable man but things do take a lot longer to get done.

Every time I get frustrated doing the DIY I read threads like these and it gives me the energy to keep going. Oh well,
back to painting the bedroom.