new bathroom advice

[jasper]

Following a flood which messed up our already shabby bathroom and shower soom I have decide to do the job properly and completely redo both rooms.The insurance will cover decoration and floors so it seemed daft to decorate around our horrid old stuff.
Anyone redone a bathroom lately/ any advice or pitfalls to look out for? Recommendations on EVERYTHING including flooring appreciated.
I really can't be doing with this hassle at the monent.
Thanks.

I find tiles BEST for bathrooms... ours are NOT slippery and do not feel cold to our feet in the morning. Very easy to maintain and clean. 2nd best would be vinyl.

Wood or laminate are not great becasue of the humidity.
PLEASE NO CARPET!!!! How un-hygenic

only colour,,i recently did mine a khaki green, it sounds awful but with plants around it looks GORGEOUS

Good point - colours - white floors are a bad idea... you can see every bit if dirt (including hair) - we have terracottal like tiles... perfect - looks clean

Just had flooring done in our bathroom. Tiles are definitely the best way to go. We got ones that were slightly rough and uneven to give a better grip when wet (ds2 has cp and needs to be lifted in and out of the bath and carried), and plumped for ones that were able to hide a bit of dirt! Ours are cream with a sort of speckled sparkly grey stone in it. And get grey grouting instead of white, because it discolours fairly quickly.

we just had our bathroom done and i would definitely recommend full tiling. We're having a good quality vinyl floor laid this week - NO CARPETS PLEASE! (cf snob thread )

got a corner bath with a whirlpool and it's GREAT! highly recommended (our bathroom is tiny and a standard bath wouldn't fit)

also we had recessed halogen spotlights put in which are so much nicer than the normal overhead light

the bad thing is we had a gravity feed shower put in and it's not powerful enough get a power shower

we used b&q ... the contractor who did it was really really good - am v impressed with the quality of the work. Price wasn't bad - £3500 for the whole thing (not inc floor) but that was having the room totally gutted and redone from scratch

I'm putting 600 x 900 plum slate tiles in one bathroom and 600 x 900 green ripply sandstone tiles in another. Do you have a shower and a bath? What's your plumbing like (combi?). How old are your kids? Is it you only bathroom? Look up www.bathstore.com. They have really nice contemporary stuff at really good prices.

Thanks all. I love the way home/domestic stuff gets a good response
Sofiaames, kids are 4,nearly 3 and 19m.
Not combi.
We are going to concentrate on the upstairs shower room first as the floor in there got completely trashed - get rid of the shower,(very low ceiling) put in a roll top bath,move around the toilet and sink.
The house is quite old so anything modern wouldn't suit.Off to look at the website you suggested.
Anyone know anything about these baths?

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Another vote for tiles on floor. Ours have some form on non-slip on them too so safe for little ones.

We love the hologen spotlighting too as it is so much brighter; even better if you can get a dimmer for them - for those relaxing bathtimes.

Oh, and a towel heater instead of a radiator. We use ous all the time.

huge mirror. bathrooms with small mirrors are SO ANNOYING!
double ended barh is good, can pile more kids in and conducive to a bath for two...
also make sure you have a ledge/shelf near the bath, v annoying if there is nowhere to put lotions and potions.

We have just done our bathroom and it's lovely (she says modestly).

My hints:

First, catch your plumber. Ask around for recommendations - good ones take a while (so get plumber and start date before you order a suite - or you will have it cluttering up your house for ages). Ours came and gave us a quote and a date to start and also recommended local plumbing suppliers which we found to be much better value and quality than big DIY places (we got the suite, shower and fittings for just over £300 - and they are much better quality than the ones we looked at in Focus, B&Q etc.)

The plumbing-in took a day - the rest dh did himself and it took months The bathroom looked awful but it was functional.

I wanted mosaic tiles but they were prohibitively expensive so in the end we went for white (cheap and classic). The advantage is that in future I can transform the look of the bathroom without too much hassle just by painting the walls and changing towels and accessories (aquamarine blue at the moment).

We ran out of money towards the end (well I had to have the Shaker style wall cabinet, matching mirror and a big stack of lovely aquamarine bath sheets from Lakeland!) so the floor looks like laminate but is actually vinyl. It came in strips like planks and could be cut with scissors so was a doddle to lay. Don't think it will last for ever but it will do for now, and it was so cheap (we got it at Wickes I think).

We also had a heated towel rail put in at the same time as the plumbing - warm towels, such luxury, but don't get a B&Q one (as we did) as the brackets that came with it were far too weak to hold it to the wall and it took a lot of faffing before it was sorted out.

The whole thing probably came in at around £800 which (compared to spacemonkey!) sounds ridiculously cheap but it is really nice, honest!

pph, no no...small mirror! I can see far more of myself than I like in a big mirror, especially climbing in and out of shower (glimpsing vast expanse of cellulite and stretch marks, not good start to day).

Something around the size of a handbag mirror is more than adequate

yes, marthamoo, but if you don't have those cringing moments you will never be inspired to do anything about the cellulite etc etc!!

When we were looking for our new house we looked at one that had underfloor heating in the bathroom (under limestone tiles). It was so snuggly and warm. My only prob would be what happens if it goes wrong. Do you have to drill up the floor?

Another fan of tiles. I also have laminate in downstairs loo and en-suite, both have been fine. I think you can buy special laminate suitable for bathrooms these days, ours wasn't but has been ok.

We have an all white room with just colour in accessories, brightish pink candles, towels, roman blind and then chrome towel heater and one of those column radiators. White floor tiles with chrome diamond/square in it. White walls, chrome spotlights, largish mirror.

I also agree with keeping it relatively plain, then it's easy to transform by repainting if you are a perpetual decorator as I am.

Good luck, it's a messy business.

I think I was ripped off, we used B &Q like space monkey but mine cost £7500 altogether, But that did entail taking down a brick wall between loo and bathroom, bricking up old door,removing all old tiles etc
New Whirlpool bath, seperate power shower, floor riles, tiles from floor to ceiling, two radiators an loo and basin. We idi also have the hot tank changed. The shower screen was £350 on it's own. Ceiling spot lights etc. The fittings were in total about £2500, the rest was labour. The chap who did it was very good and I can call him back for anything.

Thinking about it, we did also have the downstairs loo all refitted, and new radiator.

It was really hard to find somweone and I saw the B&Q desigh service on the internet and the man who came out didn't give us the selling treatment, left all the designs etc no charge, so could have used them for someone else!

Be wary of a wooden floor in the bathroom. Mine means there are leaks into the kitchen if the bath overflows/shower spray too much on the floor

Gosh some of you spend a fortune on bathrooms... ours was new - all of it new, tiling (lots), suite (with good shower), plumbing,.... and was less than £1000 (including builder/plumber costs).
FInding a cheap suite is quite easy.... and no one would know it is an cheap suite !

We had 4 quotes, the others were all over £10k, is this because it is St Albnas, probably one of the most expensive places to live.

Watching a Location/ property finder programme last night DH and I have decided thatas soon as DD and DS are at Uni, we are going to move somewhere far cheaper and probably get a much bigger house for half the price of our present house.

DS says he is not going to leave home though, as we said they could live rent free as long as they were in full time education. He says he will do a degree, Ma. Phd, etc just to live at home free.

Definitely go for tiles IMHO. We had Amtico in ours before redoing it and it looked great when it was new but really naff quite quickly. Also get good shower, separate if possible but if over the bath still have power shower.

We had amtico in our kitchen and again useless after a short time. If you have a dog it looks buggered in no time even if you do do that boring re lacquering thing every month. Avoid it!

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Mmmm, heated towerl rail. THere's all those interesting, funky ones you can get now. I'd love a new one.

Also, toilets with a push button flush on the top of the cistern are good, especially for children, bit of a novelty for them at first though!

whatever you do DO NOT GET DOLPHIN in to do it - you will rue the day.....