A premium bathroom looks calm. The work behind it is anything but. What follows is a stage-by-stage case study of one of our recent London bathroom builds, documented from inside the project — strip-out, first fix, second fix, tanking, decoupling, tile, fit-out, decoration. Eight stages, fifteen weeks of design and lead time, just over three weeks on site. Each stage is shown as it actually was, not after the photographer arrived. The point is to make visible the work that decides whether a bathroom lasts ten years or fifty.
The room was the principal family bathroom of a London period property — generous in proportion, with two original casement windows, a high ceiling, and a structural condition that would have made any honest builder reach for a notepad. The brief was a full refurbishment in keeping with the rest of the house: a freestanding cast-iron bath as the centrepiece, a separate enclosed shower, a deep-green Shaker vanity, and a finish dark enough to hold its own against the colour of the bath. Coral, deep green, brushed brass, and a black-and-white encaustic-style floor — together, on paper, an unusual palette. Together, on site, the longest decision the client and Igor took on the project.
What follows is the build, stage by stage, in the order it actually happened. The decisions that shaped the room are visible at every stage, and the work that holds the room together is mostly invisible by the end. That is the nature of a serious refurbishment. The finish is the easy part. Everything underneath is the project.
Every refurbishment begins with the same task and the same surprise. The previous installation comes out — tile, sanitaryware, vanity, light fittings, the sub-floor, the wall linings — and what is behind them rarely matches the survey expectation. In this room the original masonry walls were intact, the joists had taken some moisture historically and one bearing end was soft, and the existing service runs were a layered archaeology of three previous refurbishments. Old waste pipework that ran nowhere; copper that had been capped behind plaster; an electrical loop that turned out to feed a bedroom upstairs.
Strip-out is the stage at which the brief becomes accurate. The quote is rewritten if needed, in writing, against what has been uncovered — not against what was assumed. Joist repairs go in the schedule. Service routing is replanned around the realities of the structure. The room is photographed at this point precisely because clients rarely see this layer of their house and rarely understand how much of the project depends on it.
First fix is where the finished room is laid out, in copper and PVC and electrical cable, before anything that the client will see is installed. The position of the bath determines the route of the hot and cold supply. The position of the basin determines where the trap drops into the void. The position of the shower mixer determines a thermostatic valve location, the rough-in for the diverter, and the route of the hand-shower outlet. None of this can be moved later without lifting tile and breaking out the wall. Get it wrong now and the project is rebuilt from the studwork up.
In this room every pipe was new. Copper hot and cold throughout, soldered rather than push-fit on the principal runs, with isolation valves at accessible points for future maintenance. PVC waste pipework laid to falls of 1 in 40 minimum where space allowed, with rodding access at every change of direction. Mineral wool insulation packed between the studs and joists for both thermal and acoustic performance — bathrooms generate more impact noise than any other room in the house, and a properly insulated build-up makes a measurable difference for the rooms below.
Second fix is the final pipework and electrical work before the wall and floor finishes go on. It is the stage where the concealed thermostatic shower valve is set into its rough-in box, plumbed, pressure-tested, and protected. It is the stage where the bath waste is fitted, the basin trap is set, the WC stub is finalised, and every electrical termination is made and isolated. By the end of second fix every service in the room is in its final position, capped, and ready to disappear behind the wall lining and the tile.
The blue layer visible on the lower walls in this photograph is the first coat of tanking primer — the bonding agent that prepares the substrate for the waterproof membrane that follows. The horizontal copper run with the brass thermostatic valve box is the rough-in for the wall-mounted shower mixer. The white-wrapped vertical pipe is the hand-shower outlet, lagged to control condensation. Once tanked and tiled over, none of this will be visible again. If anything in this layer fails in twenty years, the client will be lifting tile to find it. That is why every pressure test is documented, every joint is photographed, and every concealed component has an accessible isolation point upstream of it.
The walls are skim-plastered, allowed to dry, primed, and then tanked. Tanking is the waterproof membrane that sits between the substrate and the tile — a liquid-applied membrane in this room, painted on in two coats over the floor and the lower walls, with reinforcing tape over every internal corner and every penetration. The membrane is the line of defence that prevents a hairline grout crack twenty years from now from becoming a slow leak into the joist void and onto the ceiling below.
We tank every wet area in every bathroom, regardless of whether building control require it for a like-for-like refit. The cost of tanking is a fraction of the cost of replacing a bathroom floor and the plaster ceiling below it after a slow leak has done its work. In a London period property with original lath-and-plaster ceilings under the bathroom, the case is even clearer — a soaked lath ceiling is a write-off, not a repair. The membrane is invisible after tile, but it is the single most important layer in the build for the long-term life of the bathroom.
Suspended timber floors move. They move with seasonal humidity, with thermal expansion in the winter and contraction in the summer, with the small flex inherent in joist-supported sub-floors common in London period properties. A floor laid directly onto a moving substrate cracks — sometimes within months, sometimes within five years, but reliably. A decoupling membrane is the thin polyethylene sheet bonded to the floor before tile, with a dimpled upper surface that absorbs minor movement and prevents it transferring to the tile bed.
For a star-pattern floor at this scale, on a suspended timber sub-floor, a decoupling membrane is non-negotiable. It is the difference between a floor that looks the same in twenty years and one that develops hairline cracks within twelve months. The membrane is fully bonded to the tanked sub-floor below, and the tile adhesive keys mechanically into the dimpled upper face. The floor is now ready for tile.
The room takes three tile patterns. A deep-green herringbone runs the lower half of the walls, set into the corners on a 45-degree mitre rather than on a stop-bead so that the pattern reads continuously around the room. A coral hexagonal tile clads the back wall of the shower zone, framed by the brushed brass surround that comes later. A black-and-white star-pattern tile, an encaustic-style pressed tile, runs across the entire floor, including under the bath and the vanity. Three patterns, three different bedding requirements, three different grout specifications.
Tile setting is the stage where small errors become permanent ones. The wall herringbone has to start from a true horizontal datum across the full perimeter of the room, not from the floor — a Victorian floor is rarely flat enough to use as a reference. The floor pattern has to be set out from the focal point of the room (the bath) back to the perimeter, so that the cut tiles fall against the skirting where they read least. The coral hex on the shower wall has to terminate at the edge of the brass surround in a full tile, not a sliver. None of this is improvised. It is set out on paper before the first tile goes down, and then verified with a dry lay before the adhesive is mixed.
Fit-out is the stage at which the room moves from a shell to a bathroom. The freestanding cast-iron bath in coral arrives on a pallet, wrapped, weighing more than two adults can comfortably move — a four-person carry up the stairs of a London period property, with the protective film kept on until the last moment. The deep-green Shaker vanity is fitted, levelled, and connected to the second-fix plumbing at the trap and the supplies. The brushed brass shower enclosure is set into the tiled corner with reeded glass panels and a brass-framed door, sealed at the tray junction with a high-grade silicone designed for movement.
The fit-out sequence matters. The bath is set first, plumbed in, and tested before anything else lands. The vanity goes in second, with a sample-fit of the basin and tap before the final fixings. The shower enclosure is the last fit because it locks the geometry of the wall tile and the floor tile and the tray together — once it is in, the surrounding tile cannot be adjusted. Each of these steps is photographed, signed off internally, and only then handed forward to the next.
The final stage is decoration and fittings — the work that the client experiences and that often gets the photograph. The walls above the tile line take a deep, near-black green that holds the room together against the colour of the bath and the brass of the fittings. The brushed brass tap on the bath is a floor-mounted tower with a telephone-style hand shower, set so that the bath can be filled from outside the bath rather than from inside it. The drum pendant in brass with a reeded-glass diffuser sits centred on the room. The downlights flank it on the diagonal, on a separate switching circuit so the room can be lit either dramatically or practically.
The encaustic-style star-pattern floor reads as the surface of the room when seen from the doorway, and as a graphic hand-laid pattern when seen from inside. The colour palette — coral, deep green, near-black, brass, and the cool white of the windows — resolves into something both period-confident and particular to this house. The room was unusable for just over three weeks. It was built to last fifty years.
Most of what differentiates a fifty-year bathroom from a ten-year one is invisible by the time the client sees the room. These are the questions worth asking before the work begins.
Ask for the tanking specification in writing. Brand, coverage rate, number of coats, reinforcing tape at corners and penetrations. Tanking is the single most important layer in the build for long-term life and the easiest one to skimp on without the client noticing.
If the bathroom is on a suspended timber floor — almost any London period property above the ground floor — ask whether a decoupling membrane is in the specification. A bathroom floor laid directly onto a moving timber sub-floor will crack. The only question is when.
Ask for the pressure-test record on the concealed plumbing. Every joint that disappears behind the tile should be tested at pressure and signed off before second fix is closed up. If it has not been documented, it has not been done.
Ask how the tile pattern is being set out. A serious tile setter dry-lays the floor and walls, sets out from the focal points back to the perimeter, and confirms the cut tile positions before a single bag of adhesive is mixed. Improvisation at this stage is permanent.
Every concealed water run should have an accessible isolation point upstream of the disappearance. If a valve fails in fifteen years, the client should be able to isolate it without lifting tile. Ask where the valves are, and verify the access at sign-off.
Ask for photographs of every concealed layer before it is closed up — first fix, second fix, tanking, decoupling. The cost is zero. The value, twenty years from now when something needs to be found, is large. We do this on every project and hand the file to the client at completion.
A serious bathroom build follows the same eight stages whatever the postcode. The local conditions — mansion-block acoustic specifications, listed-building consent, conservation-area constraints — shape what is possible at the design stage. We work to those constraints across Prime London and the wider South East.
Igor will arrange a free consultation at your London property within 48 hours. The brief is written from the room as it actually is, not from assumptions — survey first, design second, build third. Photography of every concealed layer is included on every project at no extra cost.