what do you wish someone had told you before you redid your bathroom and/or kitchen?

[Heathcliffscathy]

following on from the awesome breastfeeding thread, and on a much smaller and less important scale obv, i'm looking for your collective wisdom as i embark on major building works in my house.

weirdly not only am i going to hopefully benefit from your bathroom and kitchen wisdom...but as i'm preg AND undertaking building works of doom i'll be benefitting from the bfding thread too...

so your dream kitchens and bathrooms linked please...and also things you wish you'd known.

TIA

We need a new bathroom. It is the original from the 1960s and it is HORRIBLE. We found a company that claims to do everything, put in wooden units to hide the pipes, sunken sink, back to wall toilet, new bath and tiling on floor and walls.
Without even coming to see our bathroom (it is only 80cm by 80cm.
They kept saying that it will cost from £6,000!
How do they get away with it?

That's outrageous Ripeberry. I have put a photo of my bathroom on my profile. That was a total refit - nothing has stayed from the original bathroom and it's 2m x 4m. Cost just under £4k

Ladybiscuit. That's great to know. I almost felt as if they were trying to 'disuade' me as maybe I could not afford them
Anyway, they are coming over next week to measure up and give me a detailed estimate.
I just want a white floor (tiles), white tiles on walls with blue mosaic detailing, wooden units to hide pipes and the cistern, new bath, shower and enclosure and a great big heated towel rail!
Our only source of heat is an electric heater high on the wall.

Love your bathroom by the way. Everything in ours is arranged the same way, but less room widthways.
But then the 1960's sink is quite big and so heavy its on iron legs!

I'd also get someone else round to do a quote as they sound a bit like they might try and add on costs. I sourced everything for my bathroom myself (except for the wood and grout etc but I got all the tiles, loo, sink, bath, towel rail etc. I don't know if that made it cheaper. And thanks, I am delighted with it - it was black and white tiles in a checkerboard pattern before and it gave me a headache

Ok, haven't read all of thread but here goes with my tips:

Work out what you want on your kitchen work surfaces and make sure you have plugs/space in the right areas - so kettle can go near sink, blender has plenty of room above it etc

Ceramic 'fake' limestone and slate tiles are almost as good as the real thing, and about 1/3 of the price.

Pale tiles won't show stains. Pale grouting will. And you will drop red wine tomato soup on Week 1.

Tile the floor under 20cms or so of where the cupboards will go, then fit a skirting board underneath them which pops out so you can clean spills that seep underneath.

Ikea units, wooden worktops etc are fine. You can save money by building the carcasses, drawers etc. But then get a really good kitchen fitter to come and do the plumbing/electrics/seal the worktops to the units and wall etc. Try and visit a house he's previously worked in to get an idea of the quality of finish - ours was a perfectionist and did a top quality job.

Check out what appliances you want in posh shops, then buy them online. UNLESS you need old ones taken away, in which case use John Lewis.

Try and get handles/lines of drawers etc all running the same way for a sense of space.

LIGHTING LIGHTING LIGHTING.

Oh, and DO NOT let your DH plan the space around the loo.

Mine very proudly showed me some measurements which demonstrated we could have a much bigger sink than I thought.

So I made him mark it out in masking tape and boxes, 'go in' and 'turn around' as if to sit down. Impossible - we very nearly spent £4000 on the world's nicest urinal!

Fortunately I found an equally nice, rather smaller sink, which meant you could actually go in and use the loo sitting down!

Ripeberry, you might also be able to sell the original bathroom on ebay - someone on here was talking about this a few weeks ago. It takes all sorts.

Love this thread as re-doing our bathroom is finally approaching the top of our next-to-do list

Do NOT have a glass panelled door, directly in front of toilet, right at the top of the stairs!! It is quite a talking point

Do not have floor to ceiling mirrors in front of the toilet either.

LOL @ LadyBlaBlah re window stickers

Ours are still on after having been back in house 6 months

They are an absolute bugger to get off. I want to get the window cleaners in to do them but DH would kill me as he is convinced they are thieves.

Tell me you don't have that HinnyPet. I think having to see myself going to the loo day after day would drive me over the edge.

It certainly made interesting viewing.

Didn't it occur to you before you put it up that it might be a little ... unsettling? Or were you so young and totally gorgeous that watching yourself doing anything at all was a pleasure?

ROFL!!!
The mirrors were there when we moved in, they have just come down. Previous owners had mirrors everywhere!
Obviously I was indeed young and gorgeous last September when we moved in.
Sadly there is now no mirror to watch my haggard-post-moving-house-poo-face

I wish someone had said
'do not make your whole downstairs open plan
the noise will drive you nuts'

The mind boggles about the previous owners, umm, leisure activities.

Two basins in the bathroom, his n hers ya know and a bidet. And a shelf you won't crack your head off if you're rinsing your face.

Taps that don't actually hurt your hands when you turn them on - lever style taps everywhere and esp for the utility / mud room with swing so you can get large dog / boots into it.

Hinneypet - you dodn't buy from Gwenneth Paltrow did you - or does she only look at herself eating?

My bathroom refit started yesterday - blokes turned up an hour late and have already found problems which mean shifting the loo to a different place. They said they would be back today at 8.15am and I'm still waiting

Tip for kitchen - This is where we got our range cooker from: Moores Appliances they were the cheapest online and had good customer service - calling to confirm order, stockage and arrange delivery times.

Tip for bathroom - make sure the manufacturer of your bath / sink / loo etc is based in UK or easily accessible. We had a problem with our new bath and had to get replacement taps twice from the supplier, who turned out to be in Germany and it took far too long to sort out.

Cece, Love your kitchen, that's the style and colourscheme I'm after and co-oincidently the layout will be exact same as yours.

Where did your units come from? They ;ppl quite sleek.

webchick

we got the units from Benchmarx. They are the trade arm of Wickes/Travis Perkins. You can also get them in Wickes. The difference is mainly that the cupboards come already built from Benchmarx whereas Wickes all comes flatpacked.

Other places we used;

worktops - walnut block from Barncrest

appliances - from appliancesdirect. phoned up and they price matched on a couple of the items.

sink - astracast bistro 1 and half bowl - acutally got mine free with the kitchen but you can buy separately.

thought of something else

don't get a glass chimney extractor hood, DH forever bumping his head on it!

I have a big bathroom and I wish we had moved the, washing machine and tumble drier into it so that we could have freed up more space for units in the kitchen

it would have been so easy as the bathroom is directly above the kitchen, and it still would have left us with lots of room in the bathroom

not to go for the local golden boy (with the playground mums) who strings you along for 6 months and then shafts you leaving you up the creek.