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At this point, as you are probably well aware, I do work for an increasingly well-known online Bathroom Retailer by the name of Victoria Plumb. So armed with my staff discount, we went on a little shopping spree. Oh… and by the way, I am NOT using this blog post to try and sell to anyone despite my sometimes floral language. It’s just hard to get out of work mode sometimes!
So here’s what we finally chose:
Toilet
With a slimline, space-saving design and at just £69.99 the Energy Close Coupled Spacesaver Toilet with Soft Close Seat seemed the most sensible option. The rest of the suite and the bathroom decor was going to be fairly contemporary, so it would fit in well. No need for angular designs or anything more fancy.
Basin & Vanity Unit
We opted for one of the smallest units we could find: The Sienna White
41 Vanity Unit & Basin (£79.99). We could have gone for a wood
finish but settled on white, as our tiles would help provide accent
colours, plus the chrome fixtures would also provide a point of
difference. I opted for the pop up “click clack” waste (£15.99), having
made a strangely agonising choice versus a traditional plug and chain.
Bath
With no great flexibility on bath design, we opted for the Kensington Straight Bath 1700x700, which also came with a handy tube of sealant! This cost £99.99.
We obviously had to buy a bath panel too and chose white gloss wood instead of acrylic at £49.99.
To go with this, we chose a modern pop up bath waste. Pretty standard at £19.99.
Shower Screen
This was the element that was really going to make a difference. The Foldaway Bath Screen in White cost £69.99.
Tiles
Now, please set your faces to shock and horror as I reveal that we actually bought our tiles from…gulp….dare I say? Ok, here goes….Homebase.
And why, I hear you ask? Well, after looking through a number of inspiration galleries and some of the customer bathroom galleries on the Victoria Plumb Love Bathrooms site, there was one particular style we fell in love with: “metro” tiling. These are the small brick-like tiles which remind you of the interior of underground stations, hence the name. Sadly, VP don’t currently supply this type of tile, so we had no real option than to look elsewhere.
We settled on a design with a bevelled edge and decided on a split
colour scheme. The lower third of the bathroom would be tiled in sage green and the upper two thirds white.
All in all, we required 20 packs of white and 12 packs of sage. Each pack contained 25 tiles and cost a total of £223.68.
Taps
We actually really liked our old basin tap, so we were happy to find an exact replica on the VP site in the form of the Alexa Basin Mixer, with its cross handle taps and curved spout. Our old bath taps were another matter – pretty horrid and uninspiring. C actually preferred separate pillar taps, so we settled on the matching Alexa Bath Taps, with the same cross handle design. Handily we could buy both sets of taps as a pack, costing £79.99.
Flooring
I left the flooring to C and she chose some fairly outlandish multi-coloured striped lino from a local department store for £20. I was a little dubious, but was looking forward to seeing how it fitted in with the rest of the décor.
Heating
We simply opted for a bog standard replacement radiator, which our Fitter was able to get hold of from his local Trade Supplier. The cost was absorbed into his final bill.
Shower
Despite keeping our old shower, our Fitter was kind enough to replace the slider rail with a slightly more modern, adjustable design and he also replaced the head. The valve and hose remained the same.
Accessories
As most of the accessories in the bathroom (e.g. toilet roll holder, shelf, mirror cabinet) were relatively new, we decided to keep these and simply reattach to the walls once the bathroom was completed.
GRAND TOTAL (minus labour): £729.60
All that was left to do was to install it! What could be more straightforward than that?
Shower Screen
Shower