Bathroom Fitters in Olney
Bathrooms in three hundred year old rooms, where the walls need to breathe and the floor has never been level.
A bathroom in an Olney stone house is a compromise between what a modern bathroom needs, waterproof walls and a flat floor, and what an old building needs, walls that breathe and a structure that is allowed to move. We resolve it the way it should be done: tanked boards where the water hits, breathable finishes everywhere else, a floor levelled or its fall understood, and ventilation that actually takes the steam out of a room with small windows and thick walls.
On the estates behind the High Street the job is the familiar full refit of a seventies or eighties bathroom, done from the studs out with the plumbing, electrics and tiling by our own trades. The downstairs cloakroom formed under the stairs in our project photographs is the sort of small, awkward room we are good at, and Olney has plenty of those in its older houses.
Five star
Google reviews
£5m
Public liability
10+
Years’ trade experience
Family run
Milton Keynes based
Water, stone and listed buildings
Behind a shower in a stone house the wall is boarded with a waterproof board and tanked, and the tiles go on that, not on the stone. Elsewhere in the room the plaster stays breathable so the wall can dry. The floor is often on old joists or laid straight on the ground, and a wet room or a tiled floor needs a stiff, level base built over it with the damp dealt with. The extractor is not optional in a room with a small window and two foot walls, and it needs a route out that does not involve cutting a hole through a listed frontage.
Internal bathroom work needs no planning application on an unlisted house in the conservation area, though the drainage and electrics need Building Regulations approval. On a listed house, and Olney has many, moving a bathroom, altering a partition or adding an external soil pipe or vent can need listed building consent. General local guidance, confirmed with Milton Keynes City Council or a conservation professional where it matters.
Typical works can include
Every project in Olney is different. Depending on the agreed scope, works may include:
- Strip out and disposal
- Stud alterations, boxing and any structural changes
- New soil, waste and hot and cold pipework
- Tanking and waterproofing to wet areas
- Part P notifiable electrical work by a qualified electrician
- Extraction, ducting and background ventilation
- Underfloor heating and screed where wanted
The full list, and how we run the job, is on the main bathroom fitting and renovations page.
Questions from Olney
Can you put a modern bathroom in a listed Olney house?
Yes, done in a way the building can live with. Like for like refits rarely need consent; moving the bathroom, altering the structure or adding an external pipe can. The construction uses tanked boards where the water is and breathable finishes elsewhere, with a stiffened floor and proper ventilation. We will say early what we think needs consent so the room is not ordered before it is in place.
Will the extractor need to go through the stone wall?
Sometimes, and sometimes it can go up through the ceiling and out at the roof or the eaves instead, which is better on a listed frontage. We look at the routes on the first visit. A bathroom in a thick walled house without a proper extractor will grow mould on the ceiling within a winter, so it is a detail worth getting right.
How long will the work take?
It depends on the job, and anyone who gives you a number without seeing the house is guessing. As a rough guide: a bathroom is two to three weeks, a kitchen refit two to four, a single storey rear extension is usually ten to fourteen weeks from breaking ground, and a full house renovation runs three to six months depending on scale.
Weather, Building Control inspections and lead times on windows, doors and kitchens all move those numbers. We build realistic float into the programme rather than promising a date we cannot hold.
Can we stay in the house while you work?
Usually yes, and most of our customers do. On an extension you can live fairly normally right up until we break through into the existing house, which we leave as late as possible for that reason.
On a full renovation it is harder but still workable. We go room by room, keep a working kitchen and bathroom going as long as possible, sheet up properly and clean down at the end of each day.
Good honest and knowledgeable work. They gave a fair quote and carried out repairs to my house wall that had some subsidence cracking. The mortar and replaced bricks were all matched well. I would use them again for any other house job.
Bathroom fitting and renovations we have built
Our own photographs, some mid build, because that is where you can see how a job was put together. More on the projects page.
Other work we do in Olney
Bathroom fitting and renovations nearby
Bathroom fitting and renovations in Milton Keynes, the main page
Also covering Emberton Lavendon Sherington Weston Underwood Clifton Reynes Ravenstone
Planning bathroom fitting and renovations in Olney?
Send a few photographs and tell us what you have in mind. We will come and look, and the written quotation costs nothing.