Bathrooms in Leicester, priced in writing before anything starts.
A bathroom is a question of where the water can go, and in Leicester the answer is complicated in the two Article 4 areas by the fact that the outside of the building is controlled.
An external soil pipe appearing on a street facing elevation in Stoneygate or New Walk is a permission question rather than a site decision, because those directions cover external alterations. Behind the building line there is far more freedom, which is why most of the bathrooms we relocate end up at the rear of the house.
Floors are the second constraint. Victorian upstairs joists were sized for a bedroom, not for a filled bath sitting on a tiled floor, and on the larger villas the spans are longer than average. Where a waste run means notching or drilling them there are permitted zones, and we will move a fitting a foot rather than cut a joist where it must not be cut.
Ventilation matters more than people think. An extractor discharging into a roof void puts the moisture straight back into the building, and in a tall Victorian room an extractor sized for a modern bathroom will not clear the air at all.
Tanking is not optional on a walk in shower, because tiles and grout are not a waterproof layer and never were. Our bathroom installations page sets out what a full refit involves.
Four things we commit to on every job, rather than four things we say about ourselves.
Permitted development is not an exemption from Building Regulations. We arrange the Leicester City Council inspections, meet the inspector on site at each stage and see the work through to sign off. We do not make the application itself, and we will tell you what is needed and when.
Free, and you get it before you commit to us. Party walls and skip licences are raised at quotation stage, not three weeks into the dig.
The same people do the groundworks, the brickwork and the fit out. Nobody hands your job to a subcontractor you have never met.
You get a straight answer rather than a padded price. It costs us a job occasionally and saves you a great deal more.
Process, specification and what moves the price are set out on our bathrooms page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Leicester street to the next.
In a house with one bathroom the whole household is affected for the duration, so we plan the strip out and first fix inside the same week and leave the existing toilet connected as long as the plumbing allows.
Water here is hard, which shortens the life of a shower valve and furs up a rainfall head until the pattern goes patchy. Fittings that can actually be descaled and serviced are worth more over ten years than the difference in purchase price.
In a converted flat the waste runs through somebody else’s ceiling and the stack is shared, so we establish who needs to consent to what before starting rather than halfway through.
In a tall Victorian room the extractor gets sized to the actual volume of the room rather than to the label on the box.
Part of our wider building work in Leicester.
Send photographs and a rough brief, or call and talk it through. We will tell you if a job is not right for us.
Southfield Construction (Rugby) Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company 14209138.
