Following this thread with interest as we have plans to redo the family bathroom in a year or so. Currently has free standing cast iron bath and a thunderbox crapper. One of the neighbours helped move the bath in and said it was "fun". 😁
I believe the current recommendations are to get a thick blanket and a sledgehammer rather than try to lift it out...
My small bathroom came to £6500 (approx 2m x 3m with a small recess used for the shower). I used a tiler who could install bathroom suites (not a plumber who could tile). It was a complete strip out with floor and wall full tile incl. shower floor (I think tiles were approx £50psm with the tiler's discount), The tiler had an electrician sort extractor and spot lighting with switch relocated outside room, me providing all the main parts, bath, toilet, sink, shower parts,, I had to do some painting at the end.
I think I probably could have done it cheaper using the plumber who installed my central heating, but I'm happy with the course I took (he was one of the few workmen who always turned up when he said he would turn up and did a fantastic job)
@Rich_s
You could sell that cast iron bath, they are very sought after items, depending on length and depth.
@Blazin-saddles that ditra mat looks an interesting product, will that cope with the small amount of bounce of an upstairs floor?
I bought a relativly cheap bath filler. Its failed. I bought a relatively expensive shower unit - it works perfectly and is clearly better made
Diminishing returns set in quickly for sure but cheapo taps are less nice to use and more likely to fail
Don't smash up a cast iron bath. Where are you based?
I firmly believe that taps and bogs are like high end road bikes or watches. They make expensive ones because people buy expensive ones.
to a point, with brassware you get what you pay for but obviously there’s a scale of diminishing returns.
My approach was a reasonably priced Grohe mixer tap for the basin because it gets used all the time, and Screwfix own brand mixer for the bath because it only gets used a few times a year (I'm a shower guy, not smelly).
cheapo taps are less nice to use
Less nice to use? Bloody hell!
Herself would like mosaic tiles
No.
Just no.
Please no.
Big long stick no.
(yes, that is my sweary DIY experience of mosaic. Very thin, hard to keep flat, huuuuuuuuge amounts of faff and then huuuuuuuge amounts of grout, all of which is too flexible and 5 years down the line the grout started cracking....)
You could sell that cast iron bath, they are very sought after items
A few years ago I took out a cast iron bath and left it at the top of our driveway. Popped out to get some shopping and when I got back 2 hours later it was already gone. Wish I could get rid of an old fridge so easily.
Herself would like mosaic tiles
No.
Just no.
Repeat after us OP: "Sorry, they were sold out of the mosaic ones, had to get these nice big 500x250s instead."
I made my splashback out of mosaic. Absolutely very difficult to stick to the wall, so I stuck them to a piece of 3mm ply instead and stuck that to the wall which was easy.
You could use cement board for the same purpose, no?
Thanks for the enquiries about the cast iron bath. I'll post up in a year or so when we take it out. It'll be free, but buyer collects and must figure out how to remove it 😁
P.s. I've got a bad back.
Looking forwards to the 'half an hour with a solicitor costs bingo' and the 'how much for an IT whizz to come in and turn it off and on again costs bingo' threads.
Everything is expensive. Unsurprisingly (possibly?), tradespeople are not immune to this and want/need to earn money too. 😉👍
The comments where people have isolated the labour costs involved with these jobs actually sound very reasonable in the main given the ballacheness of this kind of work, the time it takes and the level of skill range you need to do it really well.
Practical skills are so often admired, but often not really valued.
Nice work blazinsaddles 👏
I haven't seen a lot of people saying the labour costs are too high, just that getting a bathroom done costs a lot of money, and being as it's not a regular purchase most people don't have a frame of reference to know how much it should cost or how much work is involved this is not surprising.
Also people often forget that as a self employed tradesman time actually onsite around half of the time spent working. the rest is doing estimates and other paperwork, fetching materials etc etc. Plus the costs of investing in tools and a van etc etc so if you think " they are charging £240 a day thats £30 an hour" actually their real gross income is probably well less than £20 an hour.
I think it might be direct to the chipboard, my hunch is that adhesive has popped off the floor, I was keen on them lift a couple of tiles up to see what had happened but they weren’t
if it is, that’ll be the cause of your problem. Chipboard isn’t a suitable base for direct tiling. It needs overboarding (glued and screwed) with 6mm cement board, Decoupling membrane (Ditramat etc), or 18mm marine ply screwed at 150mm centres.
Above are all minimum specs. I see so much shit tiling it annoys me. I’ve seen tiles stuck to chipboard, hardboard, 6mm ply, vinyl flooring, you name it. None is suitable.
@Blazin-saddles that ditra mat looks an interesting product, will that cope with the small amount of bounce of an upstairs floor?
it’s designed as a decouple membrane, so to isolate the subfloor from the tiling to account for expansion and contraction, I mainly use it on chipboard floors if sound or with underfloor heating installs. It will help on a slightly bouncy floor combined with a flexible adhesive, but really stiffening the floor is the correct method, with overlay of cement board (not the foam cored stuff) or ply. Tiles really don’t like mobile subfloors.
@Blazin-saddles I'll look a something like 6mm HardieBacker Backerboard to be put down and then retiled, we really like the tiles we got which were thankfully not too expensive.
Just had mine done, 2m x 1.5m, £9k - but needed a new electric consumer unit & sparky’s time, which came to about £2k of the £9k total. Took 12 days, at least one of which was a half day due to plaster needing to dry
https://imgur.com/gallery/0rNKWuH
West Yorkshire
