MeNext / Bathrooms
The smallest room in the house is the least forgiving.
Most of my work is bathrooms and has been for years. Everything in one is within arm's reach of everything else, which is exactly the problem.
In a bathroom there is nowhere to put a mistake. A kitchen has runs and corners and a bit of forgiveness in a filler panel. A bathroom is four walls close together, and every pipe has to be hidden, every fall has to run the right way, every cut lands somewhere you can touch from where you stand.
It is also the room that has to keep working while it is being built. Nobody moves out for a bathroom. So the order of the job is not just about trades, it is about which night the family can still use the room, and I plan around that rather than pretending it does not matter.
The bit worth understanding is what is under the floor. In an older house the soil connection and the waste runs are usually where somebody put them in 1962, and they are rarely where a modern layout wants them. Moving a WC even half a metre means lifting boards, cutting joists where it is safe to and not where it is not, and getting a fall that actually runs. This is invisible in the finished room and it is most of the skill in it. A bathroom that smells faintly and nobody can find why is nearly always a fall that does not run or a trap that has been allowed to empty.
Above the floor it is setting out. Where the first tile goes decides whether you finish on full tiles at the wall you see from the doorway or a sliver by the shower. Where the valve sits decides whether a cut runs through it. These are decided on the first morning, not at the end.
I do the strip-out, the pipework, the plastering, the tiling, the flooring and the fitting. Gas is a Gas Safe engineer's work and an electrician connects and certifies anything electrical. Full refits, shower rooms, wet rooms and cloakrooms.
Almost all of this work comes from somebody passing my name on, which after thirty-eight years is the only recommendation I would put much weight on.
In a bathroom there is nowhere to put a mistake.
How the job runs
- Look at the room and the floor below it — what is achievable depends on where the soil pipe is and which way the joists run.
- Agree the layout before anything comes out — including where the cuts will fall and where the valve sits.
- Strip out — tiles, suite and floor, back to what is sound.
- First fix — waste and supply run, falls set, everything tested under pressure before it is covered.
- Plaster and board — walls made flat and ready, tanking where a wet room needs it.
- Tile to the setting out — full tiles where the eye lands, cuts where nobody looks.
- Fit, seal and hand over — suite, screen, rails, then I show you where the isolating valves are.
What goes wrong
A bathroom failure is usually water going somewhere slowly. A waste with too little fall does not block dramatically, it holds a little every time and eventually smells, and finding it means the floor. A shower tray bedded on an uneven floor will flex, the seal will part along one edge, and the water goes under the tray rather than into it — often for a year before it appears on a ceiling below. Tanking skipped in a wet room, or taken only as high as the tiles rather than as high as the water goes, does the same thing more quickly. All three are invisible at handover, which is why a bathroom should be judged on what was done before it was covered up.
Questions people ask
How long does a bathroom take?
It depends what is behind the tiles, which nobody knows until they come off. I will give you a realistic range when I look, and tell you what would push it to the longer end.
Can we still use the room while you work?
Nobody moves out for a bathroom, so I plan the order around which nights the room still has to work. Say so at the start and I will build the sequence around it.
My bathroom smells and nobody can find why. Can you?
That is usually a waste with too little fall, or a trap that has been allowed to empty. Both are under the floor, and both are fixable. It is one of the more common things I get called to.
Do you do wet rooms?
Yes — wet rooms, shower rooms, full refits and cloakrooms. A wet room needs tanking taken as high as the water actually goes, not just as high as the tiles.
If a bathroom needs doing properly, or something is smelling or staining and nobody can find why, I will come and look. Call Andrew on the number at the top of this page.