The short answer
A full bathroom renovation, stripped back to the walls and rebuilt, takes one to three weeks on site. A straightforward like for like swap sits at the short end. A layout change, a wet room or a room that turns out to have problems under the floor sits at the long end. Anyone promising a full renovation in a couple of days is leaving stages out, and anyone who will not commit to a timescale at all has not looked at the job properly.
That figure is time on site. It is not the gap between deciding to do the bathroom and standing in the finished room, because the survey, the design and the lead times on the goods all come first. That earlier stretch is usually longer than the fit itself, and it is also painless, because your bathroom keeps working all the way through it. More on that further down.
Where the time actually goes
The order of a bathroom fit is close to fixed, whoever does it. Each stage protects the one after it, which is why a rushed early stage shows up weeks later as a fault, usually somewhere expensive.
- 1Strip out. The old suite, the tiles and usually the floor covering come out, and the room goes back to bare walls and boards. Quick, noisy and dusty, and it is the stage that reveals what the next two weeks are really dealing with.
- 2First fix. Pipework and cabling are moved to where the new layout needs them, while everything is still open. If the layout is not changing, this is short. If it is, this is where the extra days start.
- 3Boarding and plastering. The walls are made flat, solid and ready for tile. Plaster then needs to dry, and that wait is not padding. Tiling onto a damp wall is how tiles come off.
- 4Waterproofing. Wet zones are tanked before any tile goes on. In a wet room the whole floor gets this treatment, which is part of why a wet room takes longer.
- 5Tiling. Usually the longest visible stage, and the one that decides how good the room looks in ten years. Floor to ceiling takes longer than wet zones with painted walls, and small tiles take longer than large ones.
- 6Second fix. The suite goes in, the brassware goes on, the electrics are connected, and the room starts to look like the drawing.
- 7Sealing and snagging. The last day is silicone, final grout, a proper clean, and the short list of small things that only show up once the room is finished.
Several of those stages involve waiting for something to dry, and none of the waits can be skipped. Plaster, tanking and adhesive all have cure times. The difference between a fitter you trust and one you regret is often just whether those hours were respected when nobody was watching.
What moves a job from one week to three
Scope, mostly. These are the levers that actually move the date, roughly in order of how hard they pull.
- Moving the layout. Keeping the bath, basin and WC where they are keeps the pipe runs short. Moving the WC means moving the soil connection, and that is the slow, expensive part of any layout change.
- Going for a wet room. The floor comes up, a fall is formed, the whole area is tanked, and none of it gets rushed. We covered what that involves in wet room or walk-in shower.
- What the strip out uncovers. Rotten boards under an old shower, walls that are neither flat nor square, pipework from a different era. None of it is unusual in an older house, and a proper survey catches most of it before it can cost you a surprise week.
- How much tiling, and what size. A large room tiled floor to ceiling is days more work than tiled wet zones with painted walls above.
- Changes made mid job. Swapping a tile choice before boarding is fine. Swapping it after tiling has started means undoing finished work, and it puts the days straight back on the plan.
How long are you without a toilet and a shower?
It depends on the stage, and a good fitter plans it rather than leaving you to find out. The WC is the one that matters, and for most of the job it can be reconnected at the end of each working day. The stretch where it cannot, usually around the flooring, the tiling and the waste connections, should be named in advance so it is a plan rather than a shock.
The shower or bath is more honest arithmetic: it is out from strip out until second fix. If this is the only bathroom in the house, say so at the survey. It changes how the job is sequenced, and it is far easier to design around on day one than to improvise on day six.
The work was completed whilst I was on holiday. The quality is great and I am so pleased with it, it's just how I imagined it would be but better!! It also feels bigger too.
Some people time the job for a week away, and it can work well. It needs every choice settled and every product delivered before you leave, and someone still reachable for decisions, but coming home to a finished bathroom is a strong way to end a holiday.
The wait before day one
The fit is the short half of the calendar. Before it, the room is surveyed and drawn in CAD, a priced product list is put against the drawing, and the goods are ordered once you are happy with both. You can see how that works on the bathroom design page.
Then the goods arrive on their own schedules. A suite from stock can be days away, while a particular finish or a made to order piece can be weeks. This stretch is where the showroom earns its keep, because deciding early is what stops a start date drifting, and deciding is easier when you can stand in front of the enclosures and furniture in the Arnold showroom rather than scroll through them.
The useful way to think about it: the project starts when you order, not when the van arrives. The weeks in between are normal with any decent fitter, and they cost you nothing in disruption, because the current bathroom keeps working until the day the team turns up.
Why jobs overrun, and how to dodge it
Bathrooms rarely overrun because somebody tiled slowly. They overrun for boring, avoidable reasons, and most of them are settled before the first morning.
- Waiting between trades. A plumber on Monday, a tiler the week after, an electrician when he can fit you in. That is the classic self managed bathroom, and it is the reason ours are done by one team, with the plumbing, electrics, tiling, plastering and flooring in house.
- Starting before the goods are in. If a shower screen turns out to be cracked in the box, you want to know while your bathroom is still intact, not after the room is stripped. Whoever fits your bathroom, ask when the goods will be on site.
- Surprises under the old suite. These should be caught at the survey, which is why a proper survey comes before the quote rather than after the deposit.
- Supply problems. They happen to everyone eventually. What matters is whether the team tells you straight away and resequences the work around the missing item, or just lets the site go quiet.
They were a friendly, polite, competent and respectful team who always cleaned up after themselves. Despite a couple of supply issues which arose, it all came together in a couple of weeks.
If you are weighing up a bathroom and want a straight answer on timing for your actual room, the quickest route is a call and then a survey. And if you want to see what the timescale buys, the projects pages show finished rooms across Nottingham, before and after.
