Full House Renovation
A whole property taken back and rebuilt to a single standard, managed by one team from first drawing to final handover.
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Bathroom renovations
The room where shortcuts show up fastest
A bathroom is a small room containing water, electricity, heat and stone. Get the preparation wrong and it fails within two years. Get it right and it will outlast everything else in the house.
- Full tanking and waterproofing before any tile goes down
- Level access wetrooms with correctly formed falls
- Underfloor heating with dedicated thermostat
- Concealed cisterns, frames and brassware first fix
- Extraction ducted to outside air, not recirculated
- Large format tiling, stone and micro cement finishes
Why the preparation matters more than the fittings
Almost every failed bathroom we are called to look at failed for the same reason: the substrate moved, or water got behind the tiles. Tiles are not waterproof and grout certainly is not. What keeps water out is the tanking membrane behind them, and on a timber floor it is the board and the decoupling beneath that stop movement cracking the grout lines.
We tank every wet area as standard, we board timber floors properly before tiling and we form the falls in a wetroom before the screed goes down rather than trying to correct them afterwards. None of this is visible in the finished room, which is exactly why it is the first thing cut when a job is priced too keenly.
- Strip out and structural floor check
- Joist strengthening where required
- Tanking and waterproof membrane
- Wetroom formers and correctly set falls
- First fix plumbing and electrics
- Underfloor heating and insulation board
- Tiling, stone and micro cement
- Second fix, sealing and commissioning
Wetrooms and level access showers
A wetroom removes the tray and the step, drains through the floor and makes a small room feel considerably larger. It is also the least forgiving thing you can build in a bathroom, because the whole floor is now a shower.
It needs a former set into the floor structure, falls running to the drain from every direction, full tanking taken up the walls and a linear or point drain sized for the flow rate of the shower you are actually fitting. On an upper floor in a Victorian property the joists usually need attention before any of that can happen. We do not build wetrooms without checking the structure first.
Water pressure in south west London
Poor pressure is the most common complaint about a new bathroom, and it is nearly always designed in rather than caused by the fittings. A gravity fed tank system in a Victorian house will not run a large rainfall head and a body jet at the same time, no matter what you spend on the brassware.
We check the incoming main, the system type and the available pressure before specifying anything. Where the numbers do not support what you want, we tell you before you buy, and we set out the options: a pump, an unvented cylinder or a change of specification. That conversation happens at the quote stage, not after installation.
Timescales
A straightforward bathroom replacement in the existing layout runs two to three weeks. Moving the soil connection, forming a wetroom or strengthening the floor takes it to three to four.
Tanking and screed both need curing time, and that time is not negotiable. Any programme that skips it is storing up a failure. We build the curing periods into the written schedule so you can see they are there.
Questions
Bathroom Renovation: common questions
Can we move the toilet to the other side of the room?
Usually yes, but it depends on the soil stack. Waste needs a consistent fall to the stack, and on a suspended timber floor there is limited depth to achieve it. Sometimes the answer is a macerator, though we would rather re route properly where the structure allows it. We will tell you which applies on the free visit.
Is underfloor heating worth it in a bathroom?
In a tiled bathroom, yes. Electric mat systems are inexpensive to install during a renovation, they free up the wall where a radiator would have gone and they make a stone or porcelain floor comfortable. Retrofitting later means lifting the floor you just paid for, so it is worth deciding now.
How do you stop the extractor being useless?
By ducting it to outside air through the shortest run possible, sizing it for the room volume and running rigid rather than flexible duct where we can. Recirculating units and long concertinaed flexible runs are the two reasons most bathroom extractors do nothing useful.
Do you supply the sanitaryware or do we?
Either. Many clients choose their own suite and we install it, and we have trade accounts if you would rather we supplied it. If you are buying yourself, talk to us before you order so we can check the fittings will work with your pressure and your waste runs.
Where we work
Bathroom Renovation across south west London
Free consultation
Planning a new bathroom?
Book a free visit. We will check the structure, the pressure and the waste runs, then give you a written cost breakdown that includes the preparation, not just the fittings.