Bathroom fitters in Busby

Busby still feels like a village. The older core sits down by the White Cart Water and along Main Street, with stone cottages and terraces that have been here far longer than their bathrooms. Around it, on the rising ground towards Clarkston, are family homes from the post-war decades onwards and some newer developments.

The old cottages are the most interesting bathrooms we see here. Thick stone walls are solid and quiet, but they're uneven, can hold damp, and need a different approach from plasterboard. We check for damp before anything else, prepare the walls properly, and usually board or line them before tiling so the finish is flat and the tiles stay put. Bathrooms in cottages like these were often added into a lean-to at the back or a converted bedroom, so ceiling heights and window positions can be unusual. We design around them rather than fighting them.

Older properties can also have older supplies. It's worth checking whether your bathroom still runs from a tank in the loft and a hot water cylinder, because that affects which shower will work well. We test pressure and flow before recommending anything. Sometimes the answer is a pumped shower, sometimes an electric shower, and sometimes a wider change to how the house is fed.

Getting materials into an old cottage is a job in itself. Village streets can be narrow, doorways and stairs in older cottages are often tight, and a one-piece bath or a large shower tray has to be able to turn the corner into the room. We measure the route as well as the room at the survey and choose sizes that will actually get in. Where a big tray won't fit through the door, a wet room floor built in place can be the better option anyway. We also plan deliveries and parking around the street so the neighbours aren't blocked in.

In the family homes around the village, the jobs look more like the rest of East Renfrewshire: a main bathroom ready for a full renovation, an en-suite whose tray has started leaking, a coloured suite that has finally had its day. We strip back to the structure, fix what's behind the tiles, tank the wet areas and fit the new room properly.

Newer Busby homes are much more straightforward: modern pipework, decent water pressure and rooms that are easier to reconfigure. That makes it realistic to rethink the layout entirely, for example turning a cramped bath-and-shower room into a spacious walk-in shower with proper storage.

Plenty of Busby homeowners are planning to stay put for the long term, and a renovation is the ideal moment to make the bathroom easier to use. Swapping a bath for a level-access shower, adding solid backing in the walls for future grab rails and choosing a comfort-height toilet are simple to do during a renovation and much harder to add later.

Busby is in East Renfrewshire, next door to Clarkston, and easy to reach from the rest of the Southside. We also regularly work in nearby Clarkston, Giffnock and Newton Mearns.