Nearly finished installing my new bathroom, just the decorating and some fitting of new architraves top do now. It has been hard work and as my first attempt it has also been very stressful. But I am now beginning to enjoy it.

Thanks are also due to PeteP who at very late notice turned up early morning to help me lift concrete tile backer boards onto place on my new false stud wall, thanks again Pete.

Some learning’s worth sharing, maybe?

Unless you are competent and confident get a professional in to do your tiling. Other than a ceiling skim it is the only area where I got professional help and whilst not cheap it was well worth it. Even the best fittings will look crap if your tiles are wrong.

LED down lighters are great and now there are pull switch dimmers they can be lowered to suit your bath time mood. At £26 a pop (from TLC Electrical) they are not cheap but are very very good ,IP66 rated and cheaper to run than other bulbs.

One other product that I am well happy with is the Outasight Shwer screen. A great alternative to mouldy curtains or cumbersome lime scale covered glass screens.

The next fantastic revelation is John Guest JG push fit plastic fittings. These have mad the plumbing an absolute joy. Zero leaks, easy fitting, easy to cut (get the proper tool) and re-fitting is simple (except the inserts can be a pain to get out of the fittings. No doubt the professional plumbers will recoil in horror but I hate compression fittings and any attempt to use solder fitting around the wooden stud wall would have led to me burning the house down. The only bit of my plumbing worked that leaked was the exposed compression fittings to chrome pipe used to connect the toilet water feed.

Over boarding a ceiling is a faff, instead just rip down the ceiling and do the job properly if you can. It makes later fitting of down lights and wiring for fans etc a lot easier.

LED mirrors are dirt cheap on ebay and are the same as the £200+ models in bath showrooms.

Screwfix are a godsend and being open till 8pm and all day Sundays is just fantastic.

Some mistakes

Don’t buy bathstore bensham taps. They have terrible reviews, which I found out too late. Mine are fine but they tend to fail in a couple of years. Bristan fittings is what I would go for in the future.

Making a stud wall takes a lot more time than you would think and getting studs and noggins in the correct place to fit basin baths/taps etc takes a fair deal of time and lots of measurements, many of which can only be done with the new floor fitted.

Don’t assume someone has fitted a toilet using the screw holes to fix it to the floor when a foot high mound of very hard concrete will do the job!!! Chiselling this mound away took 2 hours in 15 minute shifts for me and Mrs Bockers.

Pictures will follow when the decorating is done.

Nice write up - we've just got the internal doors to repalce in our place following a full rennovation.

Interested in seeing some pictures of your finished work.

Nice one

Just out of curiosity, if you were to pay someone just for labour, how much would you roughly of expected to pay now that you know how much work is involved?

If you want a ball park for that, we just paid £600 for someone to fit a new bathroom suite for us. That included moving a sink and radiator and all associated pipework and fitting a shower where there wasn't one previously. In other words this wasn't just a straight swap of an existing bathroom.

About £500 labour for the tiler, this included plaster-boarding walls that weren't anywhere near flat for the "feature" tiles.

£50 for a sparky to wire an electric fan where there previously wasn't one.

I did the floor myself, not as adventurous as Bockers by half.

Obviously this all depends on how big your bathroom is.

Good write-up, bockers - it is very satisfying when it's finished!

This was my French place:



Before



After

Labour rates here are quite high. The tiling for 4 walls and floor plus hallway floor was £800. High but the job is fantastic and he incorporated the underfloor heating pad too. I had the ceiling skimmed for mates rates £60 The electrician will be coming round to check the jobs too and wire up the underfloor heating.

Door and bath panels you can now get custom made too for the same price as B&Q ones.

It is a tough job first time but i have learnt to walk away from jobs if they get frustrating. Amazing what a nights sleep can do and how that changes your approach to problems.

Cheapest quotes we were getting for the complete job and materials was £8k and it's not a big room. I came in well under half that, but have no annual leave left

Don't forget your Part P certificate for any bathroom wiring!

Well done John. Bathrooms can be stressfull and you need to be multi skilled to achieve a good finish.
Bringing in trades when needed and plenty of pre planning and prep is the way to go.
Enjoy your hard work.

Indeed, I consulted him on all the wiring and he will be doing the floor wiring and certification.

Ha the most important thing to doing this, is TIME and no pressure from the other half!!
Im lucky I can do most of the jobs myself, but I still find it daunting and am regularly checking the internet for best practices.
The thing is when its all finished and you have done a good job its a very satisfying feeling! and nice to have a bloody rest, just got my hall landing and stairs to do at the moment and then one day the Kitchen....god I hate decorating lol

Yep it's the decorating that i hate. I would rather do anything than prep and paint bloody architrave and skirting.

Shame I don't live closer to you John, I like decorating, am good at it and particularly enjoy architraves and skirting

I find it quite therapeutic and even more so in someone else's house, as I don't have to live amongst the mess created whilst decorating

Ok a few Pics of the new Bathroom


Before:-


During:-



After:-



Now i can have a relaxing soak:D

Very neat!

I've never seen a shower curtain stored like that before, I like it. Also the cleaner-look tiles and the towel rad, very stylish. Even the nismo-type mirror

How many beers did you have while putting up B.A.T.H.R.O.O.M.?

The Bathroom sign is an interesting issue. We put it up spaced perfectly at first with all the letters aligned on the bottom edge. However that looked terrible as all the letters are a slightly different size and width.

How it is fixed now looks best on the eye in it's location. Photos don't show this.

'Kerning' is the word you're looking for. You need to crowd the 'A' a little on both sides, but particularly from the 'T'.

I desperately need to do something with my bathroom but will wait until the summer to attack it. The tiling on the floor (and walls) is terrible so likely I will do the floor first.

I know that and we even followed a google guide. But this only works if the letters are all sized properly. The supplied chrome letters are all sorts of shapes and sizes. The two O's are different shapes for example.

Anyway in situ it looks correct to the eye, which is the important thing.

Which is the best way of all!

Looks good, by the way.

how are you finding the unusual shower curtain? does it operate easily? do you wait for it to fully dry before folding down?

i am considering this rather than having a glass bath screen, as all i seem to do is replace the seal and clean it

Very nice bockers. You can bask in the glow of a job well done before soaking in your bath...!

Reminds me of a packet of Silk cut nice finish.

I cannot praise it enough. Wrote a review on Amazon too. It is a breeze to use, you can stow it away wet, as we have done most times we have used it. Just leave it open and spray with their anti fungal spray once a month and let that dry. No glass screen to get in the way and no curtain going mouldy.

My only gripe with the company is their terrible marketing. It stumbled upon this by chance and already 3 of our friends have bought one having seen our in action.