Professional Bathroom Installation in Cambridge

Planning a new bathroom installation in Cambridge? This sounds straightforward enough: new toilet, hand basin and shower or bath? What could be simpler?

However, when you are fitting brand new sanitary ware, does your entire bathroom not deserve a makeover so the whole room is brand new?

When considering a new bathroom, it is usually the tiling that makes the difference between that superb bathroom you promised yourself, or something more mundane. The good news is that it doesn’t cost any more to lay tiles beautifully, and our team of experienced bathroom fitters based in Cambridge are ready to create your ideal bathroom.

Time for a Change?

When our team of bathroom installers walk into a bathroom to quote for a refurbishment, the first thing to note is whether the sanitary ware (toilet, hand basin, etc) is going in the same position and whether this is like for like.  Putting everything in the same place is the least costly option, because the plumbing requires minimal work, but don’t let that put you off This is a long-term decision, and you are living with the results for many years, so if you want to redesign your bathroom, now is the time. Similarly, you might like to create a wet room as opposed to a bathroom, or change a bath for a shower cubicle or both.

Although it isn’t very glamorous, the next point to consider is the location of the soil pipe.  This is the drain which takes away all of the nasty stuff down to the sewers. The location of the soil pipe pretty much dictates whether changing the layout of your bathroom is possible and to what extent.  The other thing is that the soil pipe is often not visible and might not even be vertical, depending upon what type of house you live in and when it was built.

Top to Bottom

Surprisingly, the first thing to consider is your ceiling. Is it water damaged, cracked, covered in old-fashioned artex or with a light which, when switched on, makes the room gloomier? Most people like to have their ceiling skimmed smooth and have IP65 (water resistant) spotlights fitted, which immediately makes your bathroom light and bright.

On the subject of gloomy, unfortunately, artex up until the 1970s sometimes contained asbestos.  This is generally safe if not disturbed, but we often test for asbestos for everyone’s peace of mind.  So far though, we haven’t found any!

It might not seem like a big issue, but skimming a ceiling and fitting spotlights will immediately lift a bathroom.

Sharp intake of breath

So that’s your ceiling sorted, but ventilation is so important and the position and power of the extractor fan could make the difference between a well-ventilated bathroom and the dreaded black mould in the corner. To test whether a bathroom extractor is working properly, see if it will hold a cardboard postcard in place; if not, then it needs to be replaced. However, replacing it is a good idea anyway, because they are not expensive and the old one will look out of place. This also allows us to check where it is being vented out to, and whether this is clear and working well. If you have had damp problems in the past, there are a number of fans which could be suitable, particularly one from Envirovent, which senses the dampness in the air and automatically switches on even if the dampness is simply coming from the atmosphere or cooking in another room.

That’s the top sorted, what about the bottom?

Your new bathroom is very unlikely to have the same footprint as your old bathroom, and in any case, do you want to keep that old floor? If your floor is concrete, you could fit ceramic tiles on the floor, but unless it is very sturdy and made of wood or modern floorboards, it will flex, and this can break ceramic tiles and sometimes create sharp edges. A very nice option is therefore LVT tiles on the floor, which stands for Luxury Vinyl tiles. Click together tiles work very well, and you fit them wall to wall.

To get a nice job with LVT, you take off the skirting boards and fit new skirting boards on top of the LVT so you never see the edges, and it also leaves room for a small expansion gap because these tiles do expand slightly in warm weather.

There are so many different patterns of LVT to choose from, including wood effect, which at a glance is indistinguishable from the real thing, and the good news is that it flexes with your floor and is very good at resisting water.

The only advantage of ceramic tiles on the floor is that you can create a very nice skirting board from the ceramic tiles, which unfortunately you can’t do with LVT.

“Just checking the walls, dear”

If anyone is old enough to remember Basil Fawlty checking the walls at Fawlty Towers, this is a real consideration for a bathroom because once you remove the old tiles, the walls resemble the surface of Mars and depending upon how long they have been in place and how well they have been stuck down, removing them can do a lot of damage to the plasterboard or plaster underneath.  This is unavoidable and to be expected.

The question to then ask is whether you are tiling the entire room or half tiling. Areas around baths and showers need full-height tiling.  This needs to be decided at an early stage, as it does affect the price quite as full height is about twice the work. Also, you may decide to paint the walls where previously there were tiles, in which case the walls need to be plastered to a very high standard to take paint, whereas it does not need to be as polished when tiles are getting fitted on top.

Don’t be surprised when new water-resistant plasterboards are fitted, because for the original ones, the war is over! But again, plasterboards are not expensive and often cheaper than trying to repair damaged plaster.

Also, any new wiring, such as illuminated mirrors or electric showers, is fitted before the new plasterboards go in place, so the wires are completely invisible.

Boxing Clever

Years ago, pipes and wires were invisible and hidden (chased) into walls, which at Greater Cambridge Construction we still try to do wherever possible; however, in more recent years, pipes are exposed and often in the most inconvenient places, and they never enhance the appearance of a room. Occasionally in bathrooms, particularly where these have been modified a number of times, they can look like the engine room of the Queen Mary!

As part of the renovation process, we remove all unnecessary and redundant pipework and, wherever possible, chase the pipes into the wall to make them invisible. In larger bathrooms, this can be achieved by creating a false wall and hiding all of the pipes behind this.

On particular culprit is the soil pipe, which in modern houses is often inside the house and is boxed-in, often with a box that is unnecessarily large for the diameter of the pipe. Again, we can reduce the size of the boxing, bringing it down to the minimum size required, increasing the overall available space in your bathroom.

Also, when pipes simply cannot be re-routed without major upheaval, we can box these in, in a way which makes them appear much less intrusive.

Choice of Sanitary Ware and Taps

When you are refurbishing your bathroom, the labour and tiles are the major parts of the cost, whereas the sanitary ware itself (toilet, sink, bath, etc) is generally not very expensive. So our advice is always to go the extra mile and fit the best sanitary ware you can afford.  Not only will this look like a quality installation, but it will last! Cheaper unbranded products may look ok when they are first fitted, but they just don’t last as well, and taps and shower valves tend to fail much earlier.

We are often asked which brands to buy. There are hundreds, but as a general rule, you get what you pay for, but you can’t go wrong with the following brands:-

• Villeroy and Boch
• Sottini
• Laufen
• Ideal Standard
• Twyfords
• Bath Store
• Easy Bathrooms
• Roca
• Kohler
• Kalista
• Vitra
• Duravit
• Armitage Shanks

and several others

Similarly, taps and shower valves, avoid unbranded products and get a valve or tap from a manufacturer you can trust who will offer a guarantee.

Consider the following manufacturers:-

• Armitage Shanks
• Gerberit
• Triton
• Grohe
• Crosswater
• Jacuzzi
• Bristan
• Crosswater
• John Lewis
• Franke
• Clearwater
• Perrin and Rowe
• Blanco
• Easy bathrooms

A good quality tap, matched with a good quality sink or bath, is a long-term investment for the future.

Whether you choose two separate taps or a mixer tap, just be very careful to order a matching sink or bath with one or two holes as required.

The same applies to shower cubicles and shower trays, buy the best you can afford, but also make careful note of the position of the drain hole, which can be in many different places on the shower tray. Check with your installer that a particular shower tray can be installed if the drain is in a different place.

With a cubicle, try to get the thickest glass available. A heavy glass door just has a quality feel to it, rather than a door with thin, light glass.  If a door opens out rather than slides, just check there is room for this in your bathroom. Similarly, a plain piece of glass with a gap for entry can be an elegant solution with no maintenance and no sticking doors in the future.

Like Expectant Parents

What to expect on the day. The first thing that happens is a skip arrives because there is a surprising amount to be taken away. Old bathroom suites etc have no value, so they just go into the skip along with the broken tiles, old radiators etc. You can take the old copper pipes and radiator to a nearby scrapyard if you wish, hopefully, the amount you get will be more than the petrol involved in taking it! Try Nationwide Metal Recycling in Cambridge, but there are plenty of others. Everything is removed, skirting boards, old plumbing, shower valves, flooring, and even skirting boards as well as your toilet and bath, etc.

Once your old bathroom is removed, you are left with a completely bare shell of a room. The first thing that is done is the plumbing and any wiring, especially if the pipes are to be chased into the walls, followed by the plastering to make the walls completely smooth, ready to paint or be tiled. The ceiling is skimmed, old holes filled, and new holes made for your spotlights.

If you are creating recesses in the wall, these need to be pre-planned, as often they involve fitting a false wall.

If you have laid LVT on the floor, the floor will need levelling with a self-levelling compound. This means the LVT goes down flat on the floor without the springiness caused when LVT has a pocket of air between it and the floor. Either way, the skirting boards are removed and fitted afterwards, which allows for a small expansion gap, which is hidden under the skirting board. Ceramic tiles don’t need an expansion gap, but you can either have normal wooden/MDF skirting boards or create a skirting board from the tiles themselves, which is a very nice effect.

Preparation is the key

Like all jobs, preparation is the key, and it will take a long time, relatively speaking, before you see your bathroom take shape. The final fitting of the sanitary units happens very quickly and is done near the end of the fitting process.

The important things we attend to first are the plumbing and plastering. Often plumbing is original with the house, and if the house is 50 years old or more, the entire plumbing in the bathroom has to be replaced and re-routed if the position of the sanitary units has changed. At Greater Cambridge Construction, we use soldered copper pipes, which we find highly dependable over the long term, rather than use more modern push-on units.

If you have changed your bath to a shower, this involves extra work installing various pipes to get the water to the new shower valve and ensure the drainage works effectively since the outlet pipe is at a lower level for a shower tray compared with the bathtub it replaces. When fitting a shower we also recommend using an external shower valve (a bar with the temperature control on one side the flow rate on the other side), because if this was to go wrong in the future, replacing it is a very simple job, compared to replacing a hidden valve in the wall. There are some excellent electronic controls at the moment we can install, but you do need to ask yourself what they will look like in 3-4 years and the consequences of repairing or replacing them should they fail in the future.  The most techie is not always the best solution.

Generally speaking, the shower tray is fitted first and the rest of the bathroom is fitted around this.  As we mentioned above, Greater Cambridge Construction tries wherever possible to hide the pipes, and a convenient way of doing this can be to create a false wall where space permits. This enables a multitude of pipes to be completely invisible behind a plasterboard wall, creating a smooth, seamless wall behind your washbasin or toilet.

You get the best price.

We ensure you get the best price on bathroom fittings and tiles because you buy them and negotiate the best price with whatever supplier you choose. We can signpost you, but we generally do not supply and fit……you buy it and we’ll fit it!

There are several excellent companies in the area which sell bathroom fixtures and fittings, and we suggest you visit as many as possible to get inspiration and ideas as well as the best prices. Try Easy Bathrooms, Porcelanosa, City Plumbing, Beggs and Co and Huws Gray Ridgeons on Coldhams Lane as a starting point.

Sanitary Ware and Tiling

Some bathroom fitting companies like to lay the floor after the sanitary ware is in place. At Greater Cambridge Construction, we lay the floor first to ensure it is an excellent fit for the space available.  This is the first milestone in the bathroom looking finished.

In theory, the installation of the sanitary ware itself should fall into place. It may look easy, but this is only possible because of the extensive preparation of the walls, floor and ceiling as well as the plumbing (so-called first fix plumbing).

The second fix is the installation of the sanitary ware and connecting all of the water pipes and pressure checking for leaks.

Careful and precise fitting of the sanitary ware then minimises the use of silicone sealant, which, although necessary, should be a minor addition to the bathroom and not a feature.

Once the shower and/or bath is in place, the final tiling can take place. Again, we cannot overemphasise the importance of fitting good quality tiles. Good quality tiles can make your bathroom look amazing and something that will look good for many years. Bargain basement tiles, unfortunately, can be uneven and will not produce that flawless finish that your bathroom deserves.  In short, it is best to avoid unbranded tiles and buy tiles which have a good reputation. That isn’t to say that Topps tiles, Ceramic Tile distributors and Cut Price Tiles in Dry Drayton don’t sell good quality tiles, because they do, but ensure you take their advice as to which tiles will produce that high quality finish. Another supplier to consider is Porcelanosa, which manufactures superb quality tiles from their factory in Spain and frequently has sales with 40% off their normal prices. Mention that you are a customer of Greater Cambridge Construction at either Porcelanosa or Easy Bathrooms, and you should get a special price.

Ask us to calculate how many square metres you need and add on at least 10-15% for cutting and breakages. You need to buy all of your tiles together to ensure they all have the same batch number. If you don’t buy enough and have to purchase an extra box, it may be a very slightly different shade if the batch number doesn’t match. Overbuy and return unopened boxes is the answer.

A bonus in buying locally and not ordering online is threefold:-

1. You can negotiate the best price and get local advice from experienced people;
2. You can overbuy and take unopened boxes back for full credit. Mailing them back to a manufacturer is very expensive.
3. You can get inspiration and ideas as to the latest fashions and imaginative ways of using your tiles. A lot of displays give ideas and ways of tiling that you might not have previously thought of.

Decorating and painting

Also, Greater Cambridge Construction can decorate your bathroom, which in some cases only consists of the ceiling if everything else is tiled. That means when we walk away from your home, everything is finished and ready to use. This also requires a little thought and a lot of experience, because your bathroom ceiling in particular gets a hard time from a variation of temperature and a lot of steam and splashes. Normal matt emulsion paint might not be able to cope, and in a worst-case scenario, can allow black mould to grow. To overcome this, Greater Cambridge Construction uses an anti-mould paint, such as Zinsser, to ensure maximum protection against condensation and black mould.

Finishing Touches

Finally, there are always the finishing touches, that very nice illuminated mirror, toilet roll holders, finishing trim or hooks, door stops, towel holders, etc, i.e. the individual items you have chosen to finish off and personalise your bathroom.

Get in touch with our Cambridge-based bathroom installers today!

If you would like to discuss your next bathroom, get in contact with our team today to find book you bathroom installation in Cambridge today!