What a complete bathroom renovation costs
Eleven to fourteen thousand, complete. Here is how that figure is built up, and what it means when somebody comes in well below it.
Almost nobody in this trade puts figures on anything. That is exactly why it is so hard to judge whether a quote is reasonable: you have no reference point. So here are some.
A complete bathroom usually lands between eleven and fourteen thousand pounds, including the sanitaryware.
How that figure breaks down
The sanitaryware is a large part of it and it varies enormously. Keep it simple and you are at a couple of thousand. Go towards the luxury end and it climbs to five or six. Taps, a vanity unit, a shower system, a bath, tiles: it adds up quickly.
The rest is labour and building materials, and that part is far more predictable than people expect.
The sum you can run yourself
A complete bathroom is sixty to a hundred hours of work. Not because anyone is slow, but because each trade waits on the one before it. You cannot tile onto a waterproof layer that has not cured, and you cannot waterproof a substrate that is still being repaired.
Take the cheapest sole trader rate on the market, around thirty-eight pounds an hour. Sixty hours at that rate is roughly two and a half thousand. A hundred hours is closer to four.
Then add the building materials. Adhesive, grout, sealant, the waterproofing system, pipework, backer boards, waste, the bits nobody photographs. Call it two and a half thousand, and none of it is visible when the job is done.
So before anyone has bought a single tap, you are already near six thousand pounds, calculated at a rate no good tradesman actually charges. A decent plumber or electrician is forty-five to sixty an hour, and that rate is not even the one used in this sum.
What it means when a quote comes in low
If a quote sits well under that floor, the question is not whether you have found a bargain. It is which line has been taken out.
Usually it is one of four. The strip-out is partial, so the new work sits on the old. The waterproofing is thin or the sealing tape in the corners is skipped. The tiling gets dabs of adhesive instead of full coverage. Or the drying time is compressed, which means the layer keeping water out of your floor never fully forms.
All four are invisible on handover day. That is what makes them attractive to cut.
The one number worth asking about
Ask what the guarantee is and who you ring about it. The market gives one to three years and sometimes nothing is written down at all. A firm willing to put five years on installation in writing has made a calculation about its own work that tells you more than any quote does.
You only put in writing what you are willing to stand behind.