Traditional Bathroom Suites

Your traditional bathroom suite should come with full manufacturers' installation instructions. If it does not, there are some excellent step-by-step fitting guides available on the internet, which I will not attempt to condense or replicate here.

What I aim to do, however, is to provide you with a checklist of points to consider, pre-installation. This will help you to ensure that your installation goes smoothly, whether you are doing the work yourself or whether you have employed a contractor to do it for you. Ensuring you have all the necessary fittings is an essential precursor to actually fitting a bathroom, and checking in advance that you have everything can save you time, money and effort.

Your traditionally styled basin, like most wash basins, is likely to be sold without taps and waste. Take care to make sure you have the right fittings for your choice of basin. Things to look out for include:

1. Does the basin have one tap hole or two? This will affect your choice of taps, narrowing your search down to either monobloc mixer taps or pairs of basin taps.

2. If your basin isn't pre-drilled with any tap holes at all, check whether there is space for a tap hole to be drilled by you, or if the basin is designed to suit a deck or wall mounted tap instead.

3. Does the basin have an overflow? If it does, you'll need to fit a 'slotted' waste - make sure you buy the right waste for your basin.

4. Do you prefer a plug and chain or a pop up waste? Check that your favoured option will work with your basin style and the waste that fits it.

Your toilet may be sold without a seat. This is often because customers like to have a choice between styles of seat: there are a range of colours available and there are also soft close options and even heated seats. Make sure you check whether a toilet seat is included with your toilet; if it is not, ensure you choose one that's the right shape and size to fit the toilet you've chosen.

If you're fitting a traditional bathroom suite, chances are you've opted for a close coupled toilet, as this will give the bathroom a more traditional look than a back to wall or wall hung toilet. If you have chosen one of the latter, however, you may find that you need to buy your concealed cistern separately - check you have both parts before you begin your bathroom installation.

If you choose a fitted bath or a fitted shower bath, you may need to purchase the side and end bath panels separately; often, bath panels are sold in a standard size that can be cut to fit at the point of installation.

A freestanding bath will require the addition of attractively finished fittings which cover your exposed pipework. Generally in chrome, these wastes and standpipes conceal your plumbing pipework and are in fact integral to lending a traditional freestanding bath its particular look.
So you've chosen the traditional bathroom suite that's right for your home. You've battled the DIY demons (or employed a contractor to fit the suite for you). And you love how your new bathroom looks. You don't want to do this again for a while though: bathroom remodeling can be very expensive and is time consuming, even when you go for the budget option. So how do you keep your new bathroom suite looking this good for years to come?

Top tip number one is cleaning. Clean regularly, clean well, clean until you can see your face in all your surfaces! Don't use an abrasive cloth (such as a scouring pad) or an aggressive cleaner. There will be no need for these if you clean often, and you'll find that they can actually sometimes do more harm than good, leaving tiny scratches in the surface of your bathroom suite and eventually causing it to look old before its time.

A regular wipe down and rinse is the key to maintaining cleanliness in the bathroom. Don't forget to rinse: this gets rid of any sticky soap residue which could otherwise attract dust and dirt beck to your clean surfaces in record time.