A new bathroom fitted by the people who understand what is behind the tiles

The first visit is about the room: its size, where the soil stack and the water come in, what the floor is made of, where the joists run, whether the walls are solid or stud, and what the water pressure is at the taps. Those constraints shape what is sensible. A wall-hung toilet needs a frame and a stud wall; a walk-in shower needs a floor that can take a former or a tray at the right level; a rain head needs the pressure to feed it. You explain what you want the room to do, and the survey turns that into what will work.

Once the constraints are known, the layout is drawn: the position of each fitting, the pipe runs, the electrical points, the ventilation route and the tiling plan. Swapping the bath and the toilet is possible in most rooms but moves the soil pipe, which is a bigger job than it sounds in a flat where the stack is shared; the plan says so and the quote prices it. You get a drawing to agree before anything is ordered, and the drawing is what the fitters build to.

Fittings can come from you, from a supplier you choose, or through us from trade suppliers. Whichever route, they are checked against the drawing before the strip-out starts, because a bath 30 mm longer than the alcove or a basin whose waste is in a different place from the old one is what causes delays mid-job. Tiles, trims, grout and silicone are matched to the room and to how the room will be used; a family bathroom and a rarely used en-suite take different finishes.

A full installation follows a sequence: strip out, dispose, inspect the floor and walls, first-fix plumbing and electrics, board and tank the walls and floor, tile, fit the sanitaryware and brassware, second-fix the electrics, silicone, clean, test. The plumbing is pressure tested before it is boarded over. The shower is run and the floor checked for fall before the tiling starts. The room is sealed off from the rest of the property while the messy stages happen and cleaned at the end of every day.

Most family bathrooms take between one and two weeks depending on the tiling and the drying times, and the quote says how long, with the understanding that a Victorian floor can hold surprises that a survey cannot see. If one turns up, you are shown it and told the cost before it is dealt with.

Everything that runs behind the finished surfaces is done by the same team: hot and cold supplies in copper or plastic with isolation valves, wastes with the right fall and traps, soil connections, the shower valve and its feeds, the towel radiator or underfloor heating, the extractor fan, lighting, shaver socket and any electric shower circuit. Electrical work in a bathroom is notifiable and is certified. Tiling is on properly prepared, tanked substrates with the right adhesive for the tile and the wall, which is the difference between a bathroom that looks the same in ten years and one that starts to lift in two.

A wet room is a fully tanked room with a floor that falls to a drain, with or without a screen. It suits small rooms, level-access needs and anyone who wants to stop cleaning a shower tray. The critical work is under the floor: a former or a screed laid to a fall, the drain positioned correctly, and the whole floor and the lower walls tanked with a membrane before a tile goes down. On a timber floor in a London terrace the joists are checked and the floor stiffened so the tanking is never asked to bridge movement.

Converting a bathroom to a shower room, replacing the bath with a large walk-in enclosure, is the most common request in flats where the bath was never used. It frees up floor space and is a smaller job than a wet room, because the tray manages the water.