How a fit runs
From the first visit to the last bead of silicone.
Nobody enjoys being in the dark about what is happening in their own house. This is the order a bathroom or cloakroom fit actually runs in with us, what happens at each stage and what it means for you day to day.
The visit, and the quote that comes out of it
We come out and look at the room — usually both of us, because two sets of eyes catch different things. We measure, check where the soil pipe and waste runs go, look at what the floor is made of and how much build-up there is to play with, and find out where the isolation is.
Then we talk through what you want, and just as importantly what the room will physically take. Plenty of first visits end with us telling someone their 1700 bath will not fit alongside the shower enclosure they have in mind, which is a much cheaper conversation to have then than after it has been delivered.
The price that follows covers the whole job rather than a day rate, so you know the number before anyone picks up a hammer.
Worth knowing · Bring the brochure, the Pinterest board, the half-formed idea. All of it is useful.
Strip-out and first fix
The old suite comes out, the tiles come off and everything goes away with us rather than sitting in the front garden until Friday. This is the day the house tells the truth: rot under the bath, a slow leak nobody ever found, pipework buried without isolation. Anything wet or rotten gets cut out now.
With the room bare, the pipework is reset for where things are actually going — bath, shower, basin, WC, towel rail — with proper falls on the wastes and isolation put somewhere a future plumber can reach. Cable runs for lighting, the extractor and any underfloor heating go in at the same time.
Everything is pressure-tested before a single board goes back on, because the cheapest time to find a weeping joint is while you can still see it.
Worth knowing · Expect noise, dust sheets and a day where the room looks considerably worse than when you started.
Boards, floors, waterproofing and tiling
Walls get boarded flat and floors levelled, because tile is rigid and will telegraph every bow and dip underneath it. Wet areas are then made properly watertight behind the tile — grout is not a waterproof layer and never has been.
Underfloor heating, if it is going in, is laid and tested with a meter before it is covered and tested again afterwards, then set into levelling compound so the tiles sit on a flat bed rather than straight on the cable.
Then the tiling is set out dry. Centre lines found, cuts balanced so they land evenly at both ends of a wall, bond and direction agreed with you, tile checked across boxes for shade. It is the slowest hour of the job and the one you look at every morning for the next fifteen years.
Worth knowing · Order 10–15% over on plain layouts, more for herringbone or diagonal — the cuts eat tile.
Second fix, snagging and hand-back
Bath, screen, shower, basin, WC, taps, radiator and accessories go on and get run properly — filled, drained, checked under real use rather than a quick turn of the tap. Internal corners are siliconed rather than grouted so they can move without cracking.
We snag the room ourselves before you get a chance to. Then the protection comes up, the floor gets cleaned and the room is handed back working.
The one thing we will ask of you is patience with the silicone: give it around a day before the bath is filled or the shower is used hard. It is the single most avoidable cause of a leak on a brand new bathroom.
Worth knowing · We leave you spare tiles, labelled. One day you will be glad of them.
Living around the work
The room is genuinely out of use
From strip-out until second fix there is no working bath, shower or WC in that room. If it is your only bathroom, tell us at the quote and we will plan the days around it as best the job allows.
Water off, but not all day
The supply gets isolated for parts of first fix and second fix. We tell you the night before rather than turning up and turning it off.
Dust is managed, not eliminated
Dust sheets, doors sealed where it matters and a tidy-up at the end of each day. A strip-out is still a strip-out, though — move anything precious out of the next room too.
Thinking about the bathroom?
Ring or text the number below, or email a couple of photos and rough measurements. We come and look at the room before we price it — it is the only way the number you are given at the start is the number you pay at the end.
We're on the tools between eight and five, so a text or a voicemail is never ignored — you'll get a call back the same day.