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Maybe I'm just unlucky, maybe I have too high expectation, but honestly I have NEVER, EVER had so much trouble buying stuff.
Just moved, bathroom is straight out of the 70s and knackered. Mate runs a building firm, he's got a big job on that doesn't include bathrooms so he's got fitters kicking around - brilliant, he'll charge me their day rate and I buy the stuff in.
BY complete fluke place I buy my IT kit from (£20k-£30k a months worth) also owns Better Bathrooms and my Rep will sell me stuff from them at the same discount I buy my IT kit from).
Sounds easy, sounds like a recipe for a really cheap bathroom, turns out to be a complete nightmare.
Baths, easy? Nope I've bought 3 - the first was in stock "next day" turns out was going to be at least 3 weeks.
Different supplier "next day" again, 3 weeks - they're not even answering the phone to sort a refund.
3rd Bath, hopefully arriving tomorrow.
Tiles. 1st lot "in stock" can't be found in the warehouse. 2nd lot fell off the forklift going into the Van this morning. Currently looking for 3rd lot.
Taps. Due today, courier is going to the wrong address, I've text him via the DPD app (thank god it's DPD) my Rep has also contacted him, my Wife is keeping an eye out if he goes to the wrong house. Fingers crossed.
Better Bathrooms, Victoria Plumb, Tiles Direct, Topps Tiles, Trade Bathroom none of them seem to have no clue what they've actually got in stock, or whether it's actually in-stock, but they're all pretty certain they can get it to you tomorrow, well, until you pay for it...
If anyone in Cardiff start to sense a bad smell, that'll be me, because they're tearing out my old bathroom tomorrow, but I've no idea when I can have a new one fitted.
We used B&Q last time.
It took six separate deliveries to get me the 7 items I'd ordered correct and undamaged.
Have you tried Screwfix?
Tiles - plain, bog-standard white ones. No one will appreciate your fancy patterned tiles after a few days.
I used Bathstore for stuff and they were good, everything right first time. The only issue I had was getting a sink to fit in a particular area, it was for an ensuite and had to fit in a recess. Took me hours of online searching but eventually found something that might have been made to measure.
I really don't like the "trade" places and their random pricing and stock control. You can usually get as good a price online with a bit of shopping around and they are generally good at selling you what is in stock. Or, as above, screwfix and the like.
As for tiles find your local discount tile place that has end of line stuff. Some great bargains and you can just pick it up. Or better yet don't tile at all. Shower wall in the wet bits, good quality paint in the dry bits. Much less work for you and the next owner.
Find an independent with an account with Alan T Carr. Or phone them up and ask for a local. I've always had good experiences with them. Quality and value is excellent.
On the advice of my plumber I got all my bathroom stuff through the local independent supplier - the main reason being they would order everything in, check it and then let the plumber know when it was ready for collection to save the hassle of bits missing and incorrect parts etc. wasting time for the trades. Glad I did in the end as it was all hassle free, would have been a major headache if I'd been in the OP's situation!
The only major thing I bought separately was the mirrored bathroom cabinet (with internal power) as the £200 jobs on Amazon seemed a lot cheaper than most other places offered (best the local supplier could do was £300 and that didn't have the demister built in). Fortunately it worked out OK (ordered it a few week in advance and it arrived undamaged and the quality was fine).
I used a local supplier. Bloody useless. They sent a wrong size cabinet, twice, (can't you just resize it?) a sink that didn't fit that cabinet, a toilet with a porous bowl and 2 bog seats.
First time I'd tackled a full installation myself, somewhat of a baptism of fire!
I bought stuff from all sorts of places including Germany. Bathstore online (bath), bathandshower online (sink/toilet), ebay (mixer unit), Obadis.com Germany (hansgrohe shower unit), Northern Tiles Skipton (tiles from stock), UKbathrooms.com (taps), qssupplies.co.uk (shower head arm). All of it went like clockwork, no issues.. Yours actually reads a bit more complicated than you seem to think. Certainly over the years I've had issues with mates promising this and mates mates saying they'll do that.
We used bathstore, everything was delivered in one go, no issues aside from a trap missing. I fitted myself.
Walls and floors tiles, couple of damaged packs on the pallet, these were replaced with more damaged packs until I had enough tiles.
5yrs on the finish has gone on the plastic shower tray - scratches mean it never comes clean. Never had a stability problem.
The mirror has "foxed".
The shower valve failed, replaced with a Mira.
The nice chrome sink trap blocks up far too easily.
Soft closer on toilet seat has failed.
Overall very happy given the low price (paid just under 2/3 their advertised prices), still looks great today.
I chose my fitters, went to their favourite supplier and looked through their showroom and catalogue choosing stuff that they had. Got the supplier to deliver to the fitter and my address or for them to collect from the supplier. Sorted.
Tiles were from <be>Walls and Floors</b> online, they were great.
A few misc things I bought online and took delivery of as per normal, in good time, so we knew we would have all materials well before we started.
Did this twice with the same guys.
Soft close bog seats use a moly type grease forced through a port. It's already broken so open up the end caps and whizz some finish line white grease in there
I bought stuff from all sorts of places including Germany. Bathstore online (bath), bathandshower online (sink/toilet), ebay (mixer unit), Obadis.com Germany (hansgrohe shower unit), Northern Tiles Skipton (tiles from stock), UKbathrooms.com (taps), qssupplies.co.uk (shower head arm). All of it went like clockwork, no issues.. Yours actually reads a bit more complicated than you seem to think. Certainly over the years I’ve had issues with mates promising this and mates mates saying they’ll do that.
I'm getting that feeling. TBH I've got no complaints with my Mate, he helped me 'design' it as a favour and advised on what bits to get and what to avoid and it's not him doing the work, I'll be paying his subbie his usual rate per day.
If I was honest the biggest fault is mine - I wanted it done YESTERDAY which suited him as you never know when they'll get another job for the bathroom guy. If I was to do this again I'd wait for everything to arrive before I called the labour on.
I chose my fitters, went to their favourite supplier and looked through their showroom and catalogue choosing stuff that they had. Got the supplier to deliver to the fitter and my address or for them to collect from the supplier. Sorted.
That's what we did, with the exception of the taps as the supplier didn't do the German brand we wanted (to match everything else).
Local supplier still messed up a couple of things.
I can, however, recommend the matt white plain tiles from Tops. They look ace.
Sorry...... You lost all sympathy when you said you spend THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY THOUSAND POUNDS every year on I.T.
My heart bleeds for you and your wee bathroom woes.
It think your sink taps are probably worth more than my entire bathroom ecombined.
Sorry…… You lost all sympathy when you said you spend THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY THOUSAND POUNDS every year on I.T.
My heart bleeds for you and your wee bathroom woes.
It think your sink taps are probably worth more than my entire bathroom ecombined.
I know I buy IT stuff as part of my job yeah?
Sink tap was £34.97 treat yo self.
Sorry…… You lost all sympathy when you said you spend THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY THOUSAND POUNDS every year on I.T.
Our project's latest bi-annual server refresh was ten servers at $40K each. That's one of ~10 teams that the IT department look after, and ours is probably average sized: there are plenty smaller but also several a lot larger.
So yeah, £360k/year isn't excessive for a large company at all.
ahhhhh!!!!!! I get it!
Sorry, when you said "I spend £20k-£30k on IT kit each month"..... i thought that YOU spend £20k-£30k on IT kit each month!! LOL Didn't realise that it was the firm you work for and not ACTUALLY YOU who was paying!
Ohhhh what am I like! God, i'd forget my own head if it wasn't screwed on!
Got all mine from Victorian Plumbing, set up a trade account for further discount.
All the bathroom stuff, plus radiators . Courier dropped off next day (about £30 delivery I think ). Website easy to use , and tells you what’s in stock
Kitchen and bathroom fitter rant.
You cannot have a BMW for the price of a Ford.
When will people learn this very basic thing.
Kitchen and bathroom fitter rant.
You cannot have a BMW for the price of a Ford.
When will people learn this very basic thing
Agreed - but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect both BMW or ford to know whats in stock or not, honor lead/delivery times etc, I think that's what the OP is annoyed about.
I'm waiting for a courier to deliver a replacement cistern for our cc toilet. Think you're having a bad day? A picture fell off the wall over the toilet, banged the lid of the cistern down (it must have had less that a mm of play) and cracked the cistern across it's whole width. Not a hairline crack either..... the top half of the cistern basically fell off.
There were some expletives.
I have done two bathrooms in the last few years and had one issue with a non delivery - which I just cancelled and one mistake on my behalf buying a cheap version of a bath.
Otherwise a painless process
nah we placed an order with victoria plumb - it arrived when it said it would
a clumsy roofer dropped a drill driver when fitting the velux and it smashed the sink.they ordered a replacement and it was here the next day
It wasnt the cheapest stuff in the world but it does what it says on the tin
Off at a slight tangent. Avoid Heritage Bathrooms products.
We had some that I had fited in our last house and they were shoddy. When we moved to the new house I was delighted to see that it too was equipped with Heritage Bathrooms kit.
Our bath taps are £375!!! and they have fallen apart.
I can't put this down to bad luck as 3 items have failed by the simple action of being turned on and off. Utter shit.
Things are starting to come together.
I've got a pallet arriving this morning between 08:30 and 10:30 with 'most' of it all, but not the tiles which got smashed, I don't actually have any wall tiles at the moment... that's a job for lunchtime.
I've got another truck arriving between 14:00 and 16:00 with the bath.
The fitter is currently tearing the arse out of my old bathroom.
I might actually pull this off!
We are in the process of buying some new kitchen and bathroom stuff. Getting it all from one single supplier a one-man business. So far he's been good with the designs, let's hope he's as good with the sourcing.
Sorry to go at another tangent but with the bathroom the last thing to be modernised in our house this makes valuable reading but...
One of our walls - next to the bath - is a plasterboard fake wall, yet tiled from bath to ceiling. I’m assuming that removing the tile will cause damage and need new plasterboard? In which case is there bathroom do bathroom people do the whole job of strip, remove, redecorate and replace or do I need builder plus Bathroom supplier?
Kryton - depends if the wall is plastered under the tiles but even then it probably will need reboarding - same as if it were a solid wall - it would probably need replastering to get a nice flat surface for retiling
I reboarded both the bathrooms I did mainly to get a perfect surface to make the tiling easier to get a good finish. I used water resistant boards
@Kryton57 Had my bathroom done 18 months ago and it turned out all it's walls bar the external facing one were fake (just 2 or 3 sheers of plasterboard bonded together rather than a stud wall). Once this was discovered I decided to follow the fitters advice and not replace the plasterboard at the side of the bath as they'd need to take the whole wall down. In the end they just scraped the tiles off, filled any damage and tanked the boards before re-tiling onto it. Seems fine so far and the new tiles are way heavier than the old ones but too early to say if it will cause problems in the long run.
My bathroom refit was done by a plumber that also specialises in bathroom refits, he has a small team himself but contracts out the tiling, carpentry, electrics, sealing & painting to people he knows/works with regularly (but who also work self-employed in those trades). Wouldn't have fancied trying to arrange it all separately myself even if it could have saved a grand or two.
The discovery of the plasterboard walls issue didn't add anything to the agreed cost even though it probably needed a bit more labour (but a bit less in materials). I think he'd said it would be an extra £400-500 to have taken the wall down and rebuilt it as a stud wall.
Thanks FuzzyWuzzy thats really useful, much appreciated!
Kryton57, if you are having a lot of tiling done then have a tiler do the whole job, quite a few people on here recommend using a tiler who can fit bathroom suites rather than a plumber who would also do your tiling. I guess that might depend on how much tiling you're having done, I had the whole bathroom tiled and a shower area. The reasoning being that the tiling has to be perfect or it'll all look crap.
Anyhow, to save some money I agreed with the tiler that I would strip the room of old tiles. some plasterboard was solid and the tiles came off ok which he could work with, some plasterboard just fell apart as I removed the tiles, which had to be replaced, all plasterboard he insisted replacing in shower area. IME a tiler will be quite used to putting up new plasterboard in showers and bathrooms. doing screeding on the floors etc, it's all just prep for tiling. The only job my tiler farmed out was electrics and the only job he left undone was painting.
Maybe go to a local indi tile place (I used Northern Tiles Skipton) and ask them to recommend a tiler who they know does the whole job.
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If it's the same Better Bathrooms I can see from here (in Leigh), I know they closed a few months before Christmas and reopened with a lot less staff and online only.
Probably still having teething problems?
Kryton - am I right thinking you’re in Loughborough? If so I’m local and also a Tiler who fits bathrooms and kitchens. If you need any advise or work done give me a shout.
I think I was really lucky.
Tiles - basic B&Q tiles - in stock and delivered asap.
Bathroom fittings - Victoria Plumb - which gets shitty reviews but everything was fine for me. Delivered on time and complete. Had a tap fail about a month in which they replaced no bother. Bathroom looks fab (imo) for the money. three years on and the only issue is the bath side panel has colored slightly differently to the bath and end panel, but you can only tell when you sit on the toilet in the sunshine and contemplate 🙂
Shower - some other website as the one I wanted wasn't sold by VP.
Bathroom cab w power and lights - amazon
Towel radiator - found a funny shape one that fits under the window on amazon
Everything delivered on time and nothing broken, wrong or missing. Can't belive I was so lucky!
Kryton – am I right thinking you’re in Loughborough?
No North London, sorry!
If it’s the same Better Bathrooms I can see from here (in Leigh), I know they closed a few months before Christmas and reopened with a lot less staff and online only.
Probably still having teething problems?
Probably they used to be 'High Street' and they're now online, but they're part of the BuyItDirect group so, if they've got any sense, plugged straight into their systems.
Kryton – am I right thinking you’re in Loughborough?
No North London, sorry!
Ha, no worries, not sure where I got that idea from. Good luck anyway!