New bathroom - chain or independent

[anonymous-user]

been putting off the inevitable but crunch time. need to remodel the family bathroom which means floor, walls, plumbing and sanitaryware and shower

wife is keen to get a large store to do it but im support local trade and independent craftsment kinda guy so wondering whether anyone else had similar situation and where they went in the end

i like quality and i like accountability. i get the feeling with large stores the margins are thin and once you've bought the product there is no after sales and fitting is at your risk even though it might be through them

id be looking to spend about 4g on a 4x3 room and not fully tiled but rather only floor and the wall against which bath will be

prefer not to have thin acrylic bath but as it will sit tight against a wall lengthways only one side panel visible so no need for freestanding bath

nice brassware would be good and low pressure shower only

thoughts...

[worsy]

You'll get a better job with a local trade, but you must go on recommendation.

[NailedOn]

Just finished measuring up for a new en-suite when I saw your post. We're going for a local tradesman. He's a guy who is in demand locally, and I've seen his work and like it.
My concern with the big firms is that they are on large margins then use contract labour. So really if you use them you get fancy catalogues, CAD artwork, top prices and the lowest paid worker.
An good independent guy will buy at trade prices and you know that you are paying him, not covering massive overheads.
Good luck whatever you do. Hope its a nice job and SWMBO is satisfied.

[Big Al.]

You will get the req'd results with the big boys BUT at a cost, just completed the same bought local from Bathstore and installed myself.

It would have probably have cost me double if not more with going direct.

[kentmotorcompany]

Find a good local tradesman 100%. When the person doing the job is responsible for it, they tend to care about it.

We had ours done recently:


Lucky for us my father-in-Law is a great builder (we had to wait bloody ages for him).
More details here:
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

[Simpo Two]

I did my own and sourced the parts from several places according to what I liked best in each case. Bath, WC, Basin, units, tiles, shower - all were from different makes and places.

If you're not up to that then there's no reason why you can't find a recommended fitter, give him the list of bits you like and ask him to source/fit them. With luck he'll pass on some of his trade discount.

[anonymous-user]

My instinct confirmed so ive asked the gent who did some work previously (and we are happy with) to give us an estimate. I think the wife and i will provide a spec and see if he can improve on it. I cant seem to get excited about sanitaryware though. natural stone and brassware i dont mind but sanitaryware is really tedious

just wondering if there is a discernible different between branded and non branded. we recently had work done downstairs in the cloakroom and opted for twyford only because it fitted. i expect much of the branded stuff like shanks, twyford, doulton etc might be produced in the same places and factories as non branded?