Blog · Bathroom
How long does a bathroom renovation take?
Allow about six weeks for a complete new bathroom, from measuring up to handover. For five of them you won't have a working bathroom. Most of the work takes a few days per step; what makes the planning long is the order and the drying time in between.
The short answer
- A complete new bathroom, with a walk-in shower and tiles from floor to ceiling: about 6 weeks.
- Tiling only the shower area: about 5 weeks.
- Freshening up (new taps and toilet, new grout, painting): 2 to 3 weeks.
Those weeks come from the example plan PLOTT makes for a bathroom with a builder you've already chosen. If you still need to find one, add a week for quotes, and bear in mind that a good builder often can't start next week.
Where does the time go?
With a kitchen you mostly wait for the delivery. With a bathroom the time is in the order: each trade builds on the work of the one before, and in between, things have to dry.
Step by step
1. Measuring up and deciding the layout: 2 days
Where do the shower, toilet and basin go? If everything stays where it is, so do the pipes. If you move the toilet or the shower, the waste has to move with it, and your floor needs to allow for that.
2. Taking it out: 3 working days
The old sanitary ware comes out, along with the tiles on the walls and floor. From now on you don't have a bathroom.
3. Pipes, electrics and ventilation: about a week
The plumber moves the pipes and the waste and fits the shower drain, the electrician adjusts the electrics and ventilation goes in. This work ends up behind the tiles, so it has to be right now: afterwards you can't get to it without breaking things open.
4. Preparing and waterproofing: just over a week, with drying time
The walls and floor are levelled, then waterproofed.
Things have to dry in between: in the example, two working days after the preparation and one day after the waterproofing. How long it really needs depends on the material, so ask your tiler and don't let the tiling start earlier.
5. Tiling and grouting: about a week and a half
Tiling the walls and floor completely takes six working days in the example, followed by a day to dry before the grout goes in. If you only tile the shower area, it takes half the time.
6. Sanitary ware and shower screen: 3 days
Now the plumber comes back for the toilet, the basin and the taps, and the shower screen follows. From here on you can shower again.
7. Handover
Go through the bathroom with your builder. Whatever isn't right yet goes on your snagging list: a tile that sounds hollow, a sealant joint with a gap, a dripping tap. Write them down, with a date by which they'll be fixed.
Why the order matters so much
Say the tiler is booked but the plumber isn't finished. Then the tiler can't start and everything after moves with it: the drying time, the grouting, the sanitary ware and the handover. If you tile too early, something has to be broken open later.
In a good planning each trade therefore depends on the one before. If the plumber slips a few days, you see straight away when the tiler can come instead and can let them know in time.
In PLOTT every task sits on one timeline and depends on the task before it. If the pipework slips, the tiling and everything after it moves with it. The drying time sits behind the task as waiting time, so it doesn't get forgotten.
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