I’m looking to replace the bathroom in a flat I’m buying so I went to the local shops to get some quotes – Home base, Wickes and an independent shop. They all quoted approx 5 grand for installation and tiling off a small bathroom, on top of the cost of the hardware. I was stunned. Is that reasonable?

I did my own for about a grand all in.

Get a quote from a local builder/plumber.

5 grand is crazy for the labour.

Even if it is a 5 day job for 2 men, which it doesn’t sound like, shouldn’t be more than £1500 for the labour.

Buy your own hardware and shop around for stuff.

Buy your gear online. Get a local fitter in. Save a fortune.

Subcontracted too I bet?

Tile Mountain for tiles.

Labour for tiler and Plumber.

Any Tiler who tells you he can get a better deal? Choose your own IMO.

Its not rocketscience.

I replaced out suite about 2 years ago, bath, toilet, basin & shower all came to about £1200. £200 for tiles, another £200 for wooden floor and a couple of weeks worth of evenings after work….

If you’re keeping everything in the same place, then it’s really quite a simple job as you don’t need to rip up the floor / walls to run new pipe work.

I think we spent around 3k total when we did ours. That was with buying the suite online and getting a recommended plumber in. I tiled it myself, had to rip out the old tiles (2 layers) and plasterboard, right back to the frame. The plumbing looked pretty easy TBH, I might do it myself next time.

The bathroom itself was tiny and completely tiled. We spent nearly as much on tiles as the suite. Expensive tiles really elevated the overall finish. They were an absolute bastard to drill for fittings though, even with proper drill bits.

We sold the house within 18 months, went after two days on the market, I’m convinced the bathroom was a large factor in making it attractive to buyers.

I’m sure that diy is a lot cheaper but previous experience suggests that it would not be a good idea if I want to avoid a flood of biblical proportions

Some of my fits have been known to be £3-5k, but this is for a complete gutting, walls removed, rebound and wire and wetroom installation and fully tiled, £20-30k total job spend.

For an average bathroom fit, 3 pc suite inc. all tiling like for like replacement I’d say £1-1.5k is a good mark to aim for.

B&Q, Wickes and the like are complete ripoff merchants. I was asked to fit for B&Q once, I looked at their prices and about fell over! The shop was charging on average 4-5 grand to fit (i’d charge 1.5-2K for the same job), the fitter got about a grand if he was lucky!

I’d ask for local recommends, do look at the quality of their previous work, only buy the stuff yourself if you know what you’re after as you’re unlikely to get the right fittings etc, don’t let a plumber tile, unless you’ve seen quality of previous work, don’t buy adhesive and grout from tile sheds as the fitter will have his own preferred brand.

WE’re having a new bathroom (amongst other things) built in the loft.
Plumber is charging £1500 to plum and fit the bits we buy..

DrP

How anyone can tell you what you should be paying without knowing anything about what you want, other than a bathroom, is beyond me.
Costs vary widely just as in any other trade. However, going through Home Base, B and Q or the like will probably cost you more.
Within reason, the size of the bathroom is not the factor. Most of the time, its more complicated to fit smaller bathrooms than larger. Tiling is more difficult and slower partly because the fashion trends toward large tiles. There are many more cuts and getting them dead flat (if you care) is time consuming. More and more porcelain is the preferred tile material, also harder to drill for pipe penetrations, shower screens and fixtures etc.
There is an awful lot of labour involved and the quality of the job you require will reflect in the cost.
Sure, get a mate to do it. That helps keeps us in business. I love it when people tell me as I show up to stop leaks and replace crappy sealant or poorly fitted parts that they or a mate did the job.
I’m not suggesting that it’s impossible to do it yourself, or that its not possible to do a good job when plumbing isn’t your first trade but, if you have doubts at all, think twice.
One of my customers wanted to save some money so he had me put in the hot and cold supplies and shower tray for a new shower. He said he was ok to do the wastes and tiling. A couple weeks later I had to go back because water was coming through the ceiling. He had tiled (horribly) the floor and there was no access. I had to remove a section of the ceiling bellow to find he had assembled the shower trap and left out the rubber seals.?? They weren’t in the box from the supplier and he didn’t know they should be.

Thanks to all. I am sure that g_s and B-s are right. Homebase is too expensive and DIY is not feasible. Now to try to find a middle ground of good workmanship and good price!

Try to find someone with a trade card, or try to get one yourself. B&Q is not so good on trade prices – or very fussy as to what products they’ll give a good trade discount on (usually the not the popular ranges), but other more independent outlets can give you upto 80% off RRP. Therefore if you can supply all the stuff yourself you could make some savings there.

You won’t regret getting someone in. I kick myself now thinking of all those weekends wasted doing DIY, not to mention those unfinished DIY projects, when I could have had someone come in and do in a fraction of the time – and do a far better job than I. People often forget to factor in the cost/value of their own time (or undervalue it) when trying to weigh these things up. Before marriage and kids when you’ve got time to burn, then you may as well have a go yourself, but these days I can think of nothing worse than spending a weekend with a paintbrush or tile adhesive spreader in hand and now will only do it under duress. DIY is highly overrated in my opinion and a classic victory for the marketing men in convincing millions of unskilled people up and down the country that they can become half competent tradesmen overnight. They’ve been raking in the millions ever since the DIY revolution! Makes the 650B and 29er marketeers look like they’re just playing at it.

Try a plumbers merchant. Get a price for your kit and while you’re there ask them to recommend a few fitters.

Say where you are and you’ll probably get a recommendation for a fitter.

Do not ever pay one of the DIY stores to install a bathroom or kitchen.
You’ll pay well over the odds. The fitter is on a set payment, which will be around a third of what you have paid. They will be limited to what they’ll do – (take up the old carpet, sorry, not on the list), and any subsequent problems are difficult to resolve.

I’m in London NW6.

As above, get a quote from a local plumber. I used to work for one of the Nationals selling fitted kitchens, the fitter only got 55% of the installation cost so you are literally paying twice as much to go through them.

Tile mountain for tiles ebay and reclamation yards for pretty much everything else. Diy or find a local tradesman.
We did this for under 1k

[url=https://flic.kr/p/qx9Tz5]image[/url] by Parkesiemtb, on Flickr

[url=https://flic.kr/p/qzr6gX]image[/url] by Parkesiemtb, on Flickr

You won’t regret getting someone in. I kick myself now thinking of all those weekends wasted doing DIY, not to mention those unfinished DIY projects, when I could have had someone come in and do in a fraction of the time – and do a far better job than I. People often forget to factor in the cost/value of their own time (or undervalue it) when trying to weigh these things up. Before marriage and kids when you’ve got time to burn, then you may as well have a go yourself, but these days I can think of nothing worse than spending a weekend with a paintbrush or tile adhesive spreader in hand and now will only do it under duress. DIY is highly overrated in my opinion and a classic victory for the marketing men in convincing millions of unskilled people up and down the country that they can become half competent tradesmen overnight.

This.

This.

And this again.

I’ve come to the same conclusion myself quite recently, I’d far rather be out doing something fun or learning to do something fun than buggering about on my time off making a hash of a boring job. I’m not incompetent by any means but I’m so fastidious that I end up taking much longer to do a job than I should. Not to mention knowing what materials I need in the first place and having them all to hand. Why take hours to do a job when I can work some overtime and pay someone to do it in half the time? No brainer really.

NW6?

= Mega rates

We used to live there

By all means get someone in if you’d hate doing it yourself or view it as wasted time, but it doesn’t have to be!

I’ve really enjoyed the challenge of fully renovating a bathroom, removing the bath to replace it with a big walk-in shower, stripping back the walls, building a new false wall, designing the new plumbing arrangement, tiling, decorating (and more). Had to do a load of research, learning new techniques, choosing and buying tools and equipment… and I took ages because I was doing a lot of it for the first time and I set myself high standards of fit and finish. It’s taken a long time, but it’s now almost finished and it’s extremely satisfying. If I hadn’t been happily unemployed, child-free but supported by my wife earning, it would have been a different story! I got a plumber in (well, two) to do the actual pipework as that felt like too much of a chance of causing a disaster but the labour saved otherwise would be significant (haven’t worked out the numbers but I’m assuming it’s in the region of £1-2k).

It also means I’m much better equipped, in both tools and experience, to do it again in the next place (this is not the home we’re planning to live in long term) so it will save money that time too (and possibly the next). Otherwise we’d be paying tradesmen every time.

Big question…fully tiles, or ‘splashbacks and bathroom paint’??

DrP

Depends on how much cash you have, tradesmen are OK but if you are renovating an entire house you will end up spending tens of thousands on jobs that you may or may not have. Plus hiring someone to do it, sounds much easier than it is, as you have to find someone who turns up, who does it to a reasonable standard and someone who doesn’t take a shortcut that totally screws the next person in the chain of jobs.

Personally I took the cash I would have paid tradesmen and put that towards the house, so I only had to do up one place.

Mind you my entire life does feel like DIY hell……. but I do have a house I could never have afforded and I do have a fuckton of equity, so if I did ever downsize I could buy a smaller house and have a few years off….