Not North Cyprus | Good, Old British Tradesmen!

Not North Cyprus – Good, Old British Tradesmen!

Bit about the bathroom
Our new bathroom (well, shower room) is completed and working to our great satisfaction. Nice to engage someone who actually both enjoys his work and cares about it. He’s worked for us before – did the roof last year.

For the bathroom, he is supported by a plumbing and heating man, who is just as good. And between them, they were still the lowest quote we had for the work. The guy who installed the previous bathroom 17 years ago was awful, and he was the only one who would do it. At the time, there was a shortage of people doing that sort of work, and all the others either didn’t reply to enquiries, or said “We only do jobs bigger than £X” – most of them more than twice our budget – and wouldn’t touch a job unless they bought the suite and inflated the price.

Anyway, we managed to get “Bill the Plumber”. He fell over several times – once went full length into the bath – broke things, used Plumber’s Mait to fix the basin into the console, and it was still squeezing out up to the point where the basin was removed last week (17 years!!), and EVERY joint, compression fittings, whatever type, was put together with Boss White – even the nylon fitting into the shower unit. He took the water pipes and the outlet from the basin around two walls, about a foot from the floor, put the bath in out of level (we had a problem with water flowing over the end, and coming through the light fitting in the kitchen below for all of the intervening 17 years!) I did the tiling and put the floor covering down. And he both did far less work and charged as much for his labour as the people last week – two men plus two young helpers, two for two days, and two for the whole week.

They’ve hidden all the pipes under the floor, with the exception of a short piece of the feed to the loo (which is separate) I covered that with the plastic sleeving, so it barely shows against the tiles. Anyway, they took out the corner bath and the basin/console, did all the pipework, made good the floor PROPERLY (Bill the P had used a piece of chipboard which was unsupported one end!) tiled all the walls, installed the shower unit and a new console/basin, and put new floor covering down, and a new radiator cum heated towel rail. We’ve never seen people work so hard and yet do such a brilliant job. I’ve got to put another wall-hung cabinet in, which we wanted to leave until they’d finished and see what fitted the space best, and maybe a small glass shelf and guest towel rail.

Isn’t it good to find some good workers these days? We’ll be getting them back next year to do some more.

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