Before a single one goes on the wall, the room has to be taken back to its bones: the suite out, the old tiles off, the floor up. It is the least glamorous week of any bathroom project, and the one that decides how smoothly everything after it goes.
The skip hire starts with the deliveries
Most people picture a bathroom's waste coming out of the old room. A surprising amount of it arrives with the new one.
Skip hire business easySkip points out that a new suite turns up wrapped in cardboard, polystyrene and plastic, and that this is the part of the waste people most often forget to plan for. A statement bath brings paperwork of its own, too: under the Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999, a bath holding more than 230 litres, measured to the centre line of the overflow, has to be notified to the water supplier in England and Wales before it is installed, and the work cannot begin until the supplier consents or ten working days pass without it objecting. Most skip hire firms will take the packaging in the same load as the strip-out.
The one rule worth keeping with that packaging is not to throw it away too soon. Hold on to every box, wrap and corner protector until each piece has been unwrapped, checked and ideally fitted. Sanitaryware damaged in transit generally goes back the way it came, and a chipped basin discovered after its box has gone is a far harder conversation.
Wait for the tiles before you pick up a hammer
Hand-painted and handmade tiles are made in batches, and no two batches are quite alike. Order the full quantity in one go, with a little extra for cuts and breakages. When the boxes arrive, open several and lay tiles from each side by side in daylight, to be sure the shades sit happily together.
Then store them flat, dry and somewhere they will not be knocked.
Only then start taking the old room apart. A bathroom stripped back to bare walls is a building site, and it should not stay one while a delivery date slips.
Piece by piece: what a bathroom gives up
Every bathroom is different, but the strip-out has a familiar cast.
- The glass shower screen: Usually toughened glass, which is designed to break into small, blunt pieces instead of long shards, and does so all at once if it takes a knock on an edge. Take it out whole, with two people, and run tape across it before it moves.
- The toilet: Turn off the water, flush the cistern dry and sponge out what remains in the pan before disconnecting it. Then cap the soil pipe straight away: an open soil pipe lets drain smells into the house for as long as the work lasts.
- The basin and pedestal: Usually the easiest pieces to lift, and the ones most often chipped on the way out when they are carried rather than passed hand to hand.
- The bath: Acrylic baths are light and can be cut or broken down. Steel and cast iron are another matter. A sound cast iron roll-top is exactly what architectural reclamation yards look for, so it is worth a call before it goes anywhere else.
- Tiles and floor: The old tiles come off with the adhesive behind them, and vinyl or laminate flooring comes up last of all, once everything above it has gone.
The jobs that need a professional
Two parts of a bathroom refit are not DIY territory, whatever the budget.
The first is water. Isolate the supply to the bathroom before anything is disconnected, and if the old room has no isolation valves, have them fitted during the refit rather than discovering their absence the next time something leaks.
The second is electrics. Under Part P of the Building Regulations in England, installing a new circuit, or making any addition or alteration to existing circuits in a special location, is notifiable work. In a bathroom, that special location is the space around the bath tap or shower head, up to 2.25 metres high and 0.6 metres out from the edge of the bath or shower tray. A new electric shower, a heated towel rail or new lighting near the bath can easily fall within it, so use an electrician who can certify the work, and keep the paperwork with the house.
The old electric shower, extractor fan and any electric towel rail go to electrical recycling, not into the skip.
Getting it all out without marking the rest of the house
A bathroom is usually upstairs, and everything in it has to travel past some of the most carefully chosen finishes in the house: the stair runner, the banisters, the hallway that was painted last spring.
Lay protection on the stairs and landing before the first piece moves, pad the newel posts and door frames, and plan the route so that heavy items are carried by two people with a clear path ahead of them. Seal the bathroom doorway with a dust sheet or a zip door while the tiles are coming off. Tile and adhesive dust travels further than anyone expects, and settles on everything.
If it's your only bathroom
Homes with a single bathroom need a plan for the days in between. Keep the toilet working until the last possible moment before the strip-out, and make it the first thing reconnected afterwards, even temporarily on a bare floor. Agree the shower-free days in advance and line up the alternatives, from the gym to a generous neighbour.
A clean slate
When the last box has gone, and the walls are bare, the room finally looks like what it is: a blank canvas, ready for the tiles that started the whole thing. The care taken in clearing it will be invisible in the finished bathroom, which is exactly how it should be.