We decided to have a look at replacing our bathroom units and visited a bespoke bathroom shop. Every single item was sold seperately so you get a great opportunity to generate a fabulous cost for your new bathroom.

Didn’t even get an estimate from those guys, so went down to the local all-singing, all-dancing hardware chain and their prices were a lot less. The guy in the shop was quite keen to set up a meeting with one of their sales advisors at our place, to see what would fit and all that stuff. He turned up this morning and was quite helpful, agreeing to all of our wants. He then started up his laptop and fiddled about with some software for 20 minutes and eventually was able to show us some pictures of the new kit, which looked OK. He did hint, a few times, at the possibly shocking price he was going to tell us later.

And oh boy, was it a shocking price, or as he told me ‘a very honest price’, whatever the heck that is. The hardware was about $2,660 (£1330), which was a bit more than my quick totalling had expected. The installation though was a mind numbing $8,500. The installation would be done in a week so obviously I said that that wasn’t a bad weekly wage for the installer. Of course it isn’t as simple as that. Isn’t it? Are there hidden hardware costs in that installation figure? Nope, they’re all in the first $2,600 figure.

So where did this magnificent estimate come from then: installation of the bathroom suite was $1,100, removal of the old tiles and any necessary plastering was $1,120, replacing the tiles was $1,700. That’s $2,820 in total to remove the old tiles and put up the new ones, and that doesn’t include the cost of the tiles themselves. Laying the floor tiles was $440. Removal and disposal of the old bathroom suite was $600. Installation of the shower was $600. Replacing the ceiling light was $154 and that didn’t include the cost of the light itself. Gedowdahere. The bill went on in magnificent fashion like this for quite a while. There was one cost that the salesman actually admitted he would have preferred it if I hadn’t noticed it (Yeah, like how about all of them. Ed) - ‘bathroom installation surcharge’ – $656, and that was some kind of London weighting. Sort of, if you can afford to live in London then take this hit too. This written estimate was a work of art.  

I did say to the salesman that if this fitter was on $80 per hour, not a bad rate, then the installation of the shower was going to take the best part of 9 hours. That also meant that the bathroom suite installation would take about 13 hours, it would take 14 hours to remove the old tiles, it would take a further 20 hours to put up the new wall tiles, 5 1/2 hours to lay the floor tiles and take 15 hours to install the new shower. This is obviously all wrong as these jobs do not take that long and if they did then they couldn’t be completed in the expected week. Just divide the installation cost – $8,500 – by the number of working hours in a week – 40 – and you get about $210 per hour. Now we’re talking.

Dunno what the salesman expected me to say to his estimate. He did say he had another 4 or 5 to do today. Maybe provided he gets one sale a day that’s all he needs, specially if gets 10% of the installation costs.

This entry could well encourage the next mass influx of illegal immigrants to the UK, all experts at bathroom installation no doubt.