How much for bathroom ?

mr_eddy
mr_eddy Posts: 830
edited January 2018 in The cake stop
I know its a bike forum but maybe someone can help re this random topic.

The wife and I are looking at moving this year (various factors mean we need to move within 12 months).

For our budget of £180k (not inc fees / moving costs etc) and our unwillingness to go with anything other than detached does mean we are struggling a bit. We are based in Nottingham and basically really nice areas are £300k plus.

As we don't want a detached in a rubbish area we have looked at bugalows as an alternative (as long as the Sq m is good I don't care if that is over 2 floors or 1). There are a few located on a street near where my folks live for around £170k meaning we should have £10k for improvements. The houses on this street go for £250k+ and its a really nice area.

One place we have seen is a really smart 3 bedroom detached bungalow , recently refurbished to a high spec with brick outhouse (obviously this will become a bike workshop) and a decent size garden.

The 3rd bedroom is a perfect rectangle (i.e no curves) which measures 3.7m x 1.8m , We would like to convert this into another shower room with WC - Its sits between the 2 main bedrooms and currently has 1 radiator (its GCH).

My question is would £5-7k be enough to cover the cost of fitting a basic (but nice) shower cubicle and WC with hand basin? We would be getting someone to do everything for us i.e source the bits. Literally all we want to do is go to victoria plumb or wickes and say "this shower, this toilet, these tiles etc" then just let the builder get on with it.

Basic work would be to remove the carpet and fit waterproof vinyl then fit in a shower cubicle with nice glass screens (standard size or possibly slightly bigger) along with fitting a basic WC and wash basin.

Also roughly how long to complete the above i.e less than a week / 2 weeks etc.

If we could get the job done for under £7k then we could still get the property at full asking price (worse case) and sort the bathroom and be under budget. The rest of the bungalow is fine as is.

Comments

  • mr_eddy
    mr_eddy Posts: 830
    Also how would the drainage work do you raise the floor so the drain pipe runs under it then through the wall to outside or do you just raise the shower floor etc.

    As the current room is a bedroom there are no nearby waste pipes etc - The kitchen is on the other side of the property, The room has 3 internal walls and 1 exterior facing wall with a window.

    Sorry for my ignorance I am totally useless at this stuff.
  • mr_eddy wrote:
    I know its a bike forum but maybe someone can help re this random topic.

    The wife and I are looking at moving this year (various factors mean we need to move within 12 months).

    For our budget of £180k (not inc fees / moving costs etc) and our unwillingness to go with anything other than detached does mean we are struggling a bit. We are based in Nottingham and basically really nice areas are £300k plus.

    As we don't want a detached in a rubbish area we have looked at bugalows as an alternative (as long as the Sq m is good I don't care if that is over 2 floors or 1). There are a few located on a street near where my folks live for around £170k meaning we should have £10k for improvements. The houses on this street go for £250k+ and its a really nice area.

    One place we have seen is a really smart 3 bedroom detached bungalow , recently refurbished to a high spec with brick outhouse (obviously this will become a bike workshop) and a decent size garden.

    The 3rd bedroom is a perfect rectangle (i.e no curves) which measures 3.7m x 1.8m , We would like to convert this into another shower room with WC - Its sits between the 2 main bedrooms and currently has 1 radiator (its GCH).

    My question is would £5-7k be enough to cover the cost of fitting a basic (but nice) shower cubicle and WC with hand basin? We would be getting someone to do everything for us i.e source the bits. Literally all we want to do is go to victoria plumb or wickes and say "this shower, this toilet, these tiles etc" then just let the builder get on with it.

    Basic work would be to remove the carpet and fit waterproof vinyl then fit in a shower cubicle with nice glass screens (standard size or possibly slightly bigger) along with fitting a basic WC and wash basin.

    Also roughly how long to complete the above i.e less than a week / 2 weeks etc.

    If we could get the job done for under £7k then we could still get the property at full asking price (worse case) and sort the bathroom and be under budget. The rest of the bungalow is fine as is.

    I am no technical expert but have just done up a house. Like kitchens you can pretty much spend what you like on bathroom furniture so yes you could be well within budget

    But... and this is a large butt it will depend upon proximity to and accessibility to existing plumbing. When planning these jobs they tend to keep bathrooms close to each other for these reasons. Where is the WC waste going to go? where is the hot/cold water going to come from? are the floors solid concrete?

    Getting a builder/plumber to take a look would be ideal but you may struggle for such a speculative low value job
  • DeVlaeminck
    DeVlaeminck Posts: 8,718
    I'm not a builder but I'd have thought that budget would be ok.

    My advice is don't skimp on the toilet, shower especially the cubicle, etc, you don't want stuff to start falling to bits within 2 years and have to pay again to get something of better quality. Also as always specify exactly what you want and get a written quote.
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  • rjsterry
    rjsterry Posts: 27,483
    £5-7k is doable but you'll need to keep things fairly modest, which sounds like what you have in mind. If this is a bathroom you want to last >5yrs I'd steer away from some of the places like VP as what you save in the cost of fittings you may find yourself paying in extra labour to get wonky basins to fit, or at least beware. If you shop around you can find well made fittings at reasonable prices. Tiles are easier to fit to a budget.

    As for the drainage, it all depends on the floor construction and how far away you are from the main drainage runs.
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  • and make sure you get a vanity mirror with a built in demister
  • mr_eddy
    mr_eddy Posts: 830
    Thanks for the advice - Not sure about the floor. If it was concrete I can imagine that the work would be a 'mare. Hopefully its just timber floorboards etc.

    We are going to have a look in person this weekend so will have a better idea. Even if the floor is concrete I think we would still consider it - We are looking for somewhere to live for 10-20 years so we don't mind spending as we would defo reap the rewards.

    The only reason we wanted a seperate bathroom is the missus moans that I take too long in the bath ! I am sure if the job was complicated (and took longer / more money) she could cope - I would trim my bath time down a bit too :)

    Ta.
  • Ben6899
    Ben6899 Posts: 9,686
    I reckon you'd just manage on that kind of budget, considering the room is not currently a bathroom (so you're not simply "plugging and playing" like for like).

    Running a waste to the stack might not be that straight forward, but it's difficult to comment with any detail.
    Ben

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  • drlodge
    drlodge Posts: 4,826
    You can easily budget for the components parts of the bathroom i.e. basin, loo, bath, shower etc, but infrastructure can be the biggie. You'll need access from toilet to the stack, hot and cold to the shower, possibly pumped. And separate hot and cold to the basin and toilet. Depending on your setup and where pipes are, this can be a lot of work and add up cost wise. Ah, also electrics - spots in ceiling? Extractor fan (Mandatory for building regs), mirror may need electrics for demist and toothbrush charging point etc. Pipes and wires is where much of the cost can go.
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  • figbat
    figbat Posts: 680
    They've pretty much covered it. Being a ground floor I would place a decent wager on it being a solid floor. You can have a raised shower tray to accommodate the plumbing, and if that's your only option then so be it, but I prefer a walk-in shower on the same level as the floor.

    If waste outlets will be some distance from the stack you can use a macerator and pump, but I always try to avoid these where possible (I just don't like them).

    Tips from me having designed two bathrooms in our current place and one in the last house:

    - your shower cubicle; make it bigger. No, really, make it bigger. We ended up with a 1,400 x 900 tray which gives loads of space. We were going to go to 1,600 long but found a 1,400mm shower panel/door for a bargain.

    - have a 'shaver point'. Even if you don't use an electric shaver it's great for electric toothbrush charging (if not now, then in future)

    - if the water pressure isn't great, get the shower boosted by a pump. Your wife will thank you for it.

    - see if you can find space for some storage; towels take up a lot of room and if you can put them in the place they get used, so much the better (especially if storage space is restricted elsewhere in the house)

    - get a great big towel radiator. If possible with an electric element as well as being plumbed into the central heating. I'd guess the rad in there at the moment is part of the house's heating circuit, so will only come on when the heating is on. Our towel rads are run off the hot water circuit, meaning they come on all year round, even when the heating is off. Rather than rerun your heating circuit, the addition of an electric element offers the same option. It does need extra wiring though.

    - are two bedrooms going to see you out for the foreseeable future? Are extension opportunities there? Can you add a room to the loft space? If not sure, look around at other, similar houses in the area.

    Any chance of showing us a floorplan to work on?
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  • rjsterry
    rjsterry Posts: 27,483
    A quick jump will tell you what the floor construction is. If it goes bong or has any kind of give, it is almost certainly a suspended floor. Air bricks at ground level around the exterior of the house also confirm this.

    Good advice to think about future expansion.
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  • When you eventually come to sell it, you'll be selling a 2 bed house having bought a 3 bed house. Could you be spending money to reduce the value of the house?
  • Wheelspinner
    Wheelspinner Posts: 6,550
    When you eventually come to sell it, you'll be selling a 2 bed house having bought a 3 bed house. Could you be spending money to reduce the value of the house?
    I wondered about the OP's measurements. Out here, a room that small cannot legally be called a bedroom anyway?
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  • drlodge
    drlodge Posts: 4,826
    When you eventually come to sell it, you'll be selling a 2 bed house having bought a 3 bed house. Could you be spending money to reduce the value of the house?
    I wondered about the OP's measurements. Out here, a room that small cannot legally be called a bedroom anyway?

    Its about 12' x 6' in old money, plenty big enough to be a bedroom but a tad narrow. A double room is 10' x 10' or 100 square feet.
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  • Eddy could you post up a floor plan - we might be able to come up with a better more cost effective idea
  • rjsterry
    rjsterry Posts: 27,483
    drlodge wrote:
    When you eventually come to sell it, you'll be selling a 2 bed house having bought a 3 bed house. Could you be spending money to reduce the value of the house?
    I wondered about the OP's measurements. Out here, a room that small cannot legally be called a bedroom anyway?

    Its about 12' x 6' in old money, plenty big enough to be a bedroom but a tad narrow. A double room is 10' x 10' or 100 square feet.

    Minimum size for new development is 7m2 for a single room (OP is 6.6m2), but you are obviously free to use existing space however you wish.
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  • mouth
    mouth Posts: 1,195
    Pretty much everything I was gonna say has been said above - raised shower pod, masecrator toilet etc.

    We had our bathroom done in April last year and laid out around £3500 - this covered tiles (4sqm on the floor, 13sqm walls), re-plaster/skim one small wall and ceiling, new leccy shower, towel radiator, new cabinets, throne and basin,taps, new tub and shower screen, all copper piping renewed and dropped underfloor (I suspect the old piping was the original from 1958) and disposal of all of the old stuff in a skip. We also painted ourselves - that I can do and I ain't gonna pay someone upwards of £100 a day. A job in this price range is likely going to be a "you buy it and we'll fit it" affair rather than a total project management.

    As it happens I'm Nottingham based. The tradesman we used was pretty good and nailed it all out inside 6 days but we were out of the house on holiday - always gonna be easier that way but you're having a new room built rather than an old one refurbished. Expect disruption to your heating and hot water though. The guys have since given my monster in law the run around on some work for her so I won't pass their details on this time round.

    We got our shower and paint from B&Q (probably), tiles from EMC at Southglade park (really worth a visit "....I, erm, just wanted a white tile.......") and bathroom suite from A1 Bathrooms opposite the Police Station near the tram depot. They ain't got much of a showroom but a really comprehensive catalogue.
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  • bbrap
    bbrap Posts: 610
    Another thing to take into consideration is electrics. If the room currently (see what I did there) has power outlets and you convert it to a bathroom you will need to modify them to comply with part P regulations. Any socket must be 3 metres from a bath or shower so given your sizes will be a no no (shaver sockets are allowed of course).
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  • figbat
    figbat Posts: 680
    True, but having power already there means stuff like towel rad and shower pump may be easy to hook up. You may also have to take the light switch away (pull cord or move it outside). You’ll need extraction too (think someone may have mentioned this).
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