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Very nice bathrooms there @Blazin_saddles, no wonder you're in demand!
We* are in the process of redecorating our downstairs toilet. Herself would like mosaic tiles and we have some sample tile panels in to check. 4.5square metres of tiling is £700-ish just for the tiles!! Herself has expensive tastes.
*Mrs S gets to choose colours and finishes, plus supervises and I get to do the labour/swearing.
Thanks CG!
*Mrs S gets to choose colours and finishes, plus supervises and I get to do the labour/swearing.
you’ll swear a lot. I detest doing mosaic work, always have since my apprenticeship. Takes ages and doesn’t look very good when finished IMO.
And mosaic tiles (in my experience) aren’t as deep as standard tiles so it’s a pain to use them together.
Our en suite is very similar in size and layout to the first pic from Blazin Saddles pic.
We paid about £12k in North Shropshire for nice stuff.
IMO getting a decent bog is the hardest bit. We went for one without much depth to save space. Wish we hadn’t. Means a gentleman’s sausage always touches the front of the seat, and your number 2’s tend to always hit the back of the pan, rather than falling straight in the water (these things matter when you have to clean up each time ) 😂
Bloody hell, I'm glad I did mine myself now. £500, kept the same bath and bog as there was nothing wrong with them. It looks great because we chose well on the paint (yes, paint!) and I made a lovely splashback out of mosaic tiles with a bit of colour rather than B&Q showroom beige. Other bits came from B&Q though, just not the design theme.
I firmly believe that taps and bogs are like high end road bikes or watches. They make expensive ones because people buy expensive ones.
South Derbyshire here, just had our en-suite done, smaller room than the OP but trades person was about £3700 for labour (just under 2 weeks) and consumables, we supplied tiles, fittings, etc and whole job came to around £5500 - £6000.
Went for a tiled floor upstairs in an under 20 year old property and the tiles started coming loose after the first day, trades person happy to cover replacing them but might switch to a high quality vinyl system.
Went for a tiled floor upstairs in an under 20 year old property and the tiles started coming loose after the first day, trades person happy to cover replacing them but might switch to a high quality vinyl system.
What is the subfloor and how was it prepped? There’s no reason a properly prepped floor using cement board or ditramat and fixed with S1 flexible adhesive should be letting go. Please don’t tell me they stuck them straight to the chipboard…
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. Same with toilets, high end ones are nicer designs generally and better made, but essentially still do the same job. Good ones are much nicer/easier to fit and will last longer generally, most of the money should be the seat and working parts as they’re the use items.
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.
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