Bathroom Fitting in South Tyneside

Full and part refits

A full bathroom refit takes the room back to bare walls and floor. The old suite comes out, the pipework is reworked for the new layout, and the new bath or shower, basin and toilet go in. It suits a bathroom that is tired throughout, or a layout that no longer works for the household.

A part refit changes one or two things and leaves the rest of the room alone. Swapping a bath for a shower tray, replacing a cracked basin, or fitting a new toilet and cistern are typical examples.

Planning the layout

In older terraces around the borough the bathroom is often a small room at the back of the house or a converted bedroom upstairs, so a few centimetres can make a real difference to what fits. Ventilation matters in a small room too, since condensation with nowhere to go ends up as mould on the ceiling and around the window.

The position of the soil pipe decides a lot. Moving a toilet to the other side of the room can mean a longer run of waste pipe with enough fall, which is not always possible, while moving a basin or bath is usually simpler. We look at the room and talk through what the layout allows before starting.

Choosing the suite

A bathroom suite means the bath or shower, basin and toilet, along with the taps and waste fittings that go with them. Close coupled toilets sit with the cistern on the pan, back to wall toilets hide the cistern behind a panel, and a basin can stand on a pedestal, hang from the wall or sit in a vanity unit with storage underneath.

Ask when you call about sourcing the suite, so it is clear from the outset who is buying which items.

Baths, showers and water pressure

The shower you can have depends on your hot water system. A combi boiler can feed a mixer shower at mains pressure, while a gravity fed system with a cylinder and a loft tank may give a gentle flow at the shower head unless a pump is added.

If you are thinking about a bigger shower, or replacing the bath with one, mention it when you call so the hot water side of the job can be talked through as well.

Beyond the suite

Ask when you call about anything beyond the plumbing and the suite, such as wall and floor finishes, lighting or an extractor fan, so the scope is clear from the start.

Old bathrooms sometimes hide problems that only show once the suite is out, such as a soft floorboard under a leaking toilet or corroded pipework behind a bath panel. If something like that turns up, we explain how it changes the job.

Older houses sometimes have a mix of pipe sizes, or old lead and iron sections, running under the bathroom floor. With the floor already open during a full refit, that is a sensible point to talk about replacing them.

Bathrooms across the borough

Victorian and interwar terraces tend to have compact bathrooms, while semis and detached houses often have a larger family bathroom. Bungalows usually have the bathroom on the ground floor, which tends to keep the waste pipe runs short.

In every case the bathroom is out of use for part of the work, and a part refit is a smaller job than a full one. Where the house has just the one toilet, mention that when you call so the order of the work can be talked through.