Bathroom renovation: from stripping out to the last seal

A full refit means stripping the room back to the walls and floor: new suite, new pipework where needed, tiling or wall panels, flooring, lighting and ventilation. A partial refit keeps some of what is there, for example a sound bath or the existing tiles, and replaces the rest. A bath-to-shower conversion is a common middle route, especially where getting in and out of the bath has become difficult.

The biggest single cost driver is usually not the suite but the layout. Keeping the toilet, basin and bath or shower where they are means the waste pipes stay put. Moving the toilet across the room can mean lifting floorboards, rerouting a soil pipe with enough fall, or in some houses fitting a macerator. Ask the fitter to price both options if you are undecided.

A new downstairs toilet, often under the stairs, is a different kind of job: it needs a connection to the drains, a water supply and extract ventilation in a space that had none of them before.

Bathrooms are treated as a special location in the Building Regulations for England. Adding to or altering a circuit in the space around a bath tap or shower head, fitting a new circuit such as one for an electric shower, or replacing the consumer unit is notifiable work. It must either be done by an electrician registered with a competent person scheme, who can self-certify it, or be notified to Building Control before it starts. Wales and Scotland have their own versions of these rules.

In practice this covers shower pumps, electric showers, heated towel rails on a new spur, extractor fans, shaver sockets and electric underfloor heating. If your bathroom fitter is not registered for electrical work, ask who will do it and who will issue the certificate. You will want that certificate when you sell the house.

The Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999 apply in England and Wales, and Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own equivalents. Some installations must be notified to your water company before work begins, including a bath holding more than 230 litres to the overflow, a bidet with an ascending spray or flexible hose, and a pump or booster drawing more than 12 litres per minute from the supply pipe. A large freestanding bath or a powerful pumped shower can fall into this category.

If your hot water comes from an unvented cylinder, or you plan to fit one to get mains-pressure showers, that installation is notifiable building work. The installer should hold a current qualification for unvented hot water systems, often called G3 after the part of the regulations it relates to, or be registered with a competent person scheme for this work. Anything that touches a gas boiler or gas water heater needs a Gas Safe registered engineer.

A bathroom also needs working extract ventilation. An undersized fan, or one ducted into the loft instead of outside, is one of the most common causes of mould on a new ceiling within the first winter.

Source: legislation.gov.uk

Two quotes for the same room can differ widely because one includes things the other leaves for later. A quote you can compare against the work describes each stage, not just a total.

• strip-out and removal of the old suite, tiles and waste, and whether a skip is included
• who supplies the suite, taps, shower and tiles, and who takes delivery
• pipework changes, waste routes and whether the soil pipe moves
• waterproofing behind tiles in the shower area, or a tanked floor for a wet room
• electrical work, who does it and which certificate you receive
• plastering, tiling or panels, flooring and decoration
• how long you will be without a working toilet or shower
• how making good after hidden damage, such as rotten joists, will be priced

If you own a flat, check your lease before you plan anything beyond a like-for-like replacement. Leases often require consent for alterations, and some restrict hard flooring or moving a bathroom above a neighbour's living room. A leak from a flat above is one of the most common neighbour disputes, so waterproofing matters doubly here.

In older houses, lifting the floor can reveal joists notched too deeply by earlier plumbers, or old lead pipework. Buildings from before 2000 may contain asbestos, for example in some older textured ceiling coatings or panels boxing in pipes. A careful fitter stops and arranges testing rather than guessing. A fair quote says how any extra work will be priced before it is done.

Source: hse.gov.uk

You describe the room, what you want changed and when, and confirm your phone number by a text-message code and your email address by a link. We offer the request without your name or contact details to bathroom companies covering your area. The first one to buy it gets it, and it then disappears from the list, so no second company receives it. The business pays Offrano; you pay nothing.

Before the company sees your details, we email you its name, address and phone number. There is no guarantee that a company takes up the request; if none does within 21 days, it is withdrawn. Offrano checks that buyers are registered businesses but does not assess their workmanship, so ask about registration for electrical work and the unvented qualification if relevant, and look at finished jobs before you agree a price.