Bathroom fitters in Shawlands

Walk along Pollokshaws Road or Kilmarnock Road and look up. Almost every building is a tenement, and almost every one of those flats has a bathroom that was squeezed in long after the building went up. That's the story of the Shawlands bathroom. It's often a long, thin room at the end of the hall or a converted box room, with a toilet stuck on the wall nearest the stack and boxing in the corners that nobody can explain.

The shared soil stack is the first thing we look at in a Shawlands flat. It's usually cast iron, it serves the whole stair, and it decides where your toilet can go. Moving the toilet more than a short way is rarely realistic, but the basin and shower are much more flexible, and a good layout can completely change how the room feels. In plenty of flats the bath barely gets used. Swapping it for a walk-in shower with a fixed glass panel is one of the best changes you can make to a Shawlands bathroom.

Floors are the second thing. Shawlands flats are timber boards on timber joists, and the neighbour below has a plaster ceiling you really don't want to stain. We check the joists for old notches, lay a rigid base for the tiles and tank the shower zone properly. If you want a wet room, the depth of your joists decides which drain we can use, and we'll show you the options at the survey rather than guessing.

Water pressure is a common complaint on the top floors. Some upper flats still run off a tank in the roof space, which gives a lazy shower no matter how expensive the head is. We test your supply before recommending anything, and if you're on a combi we check it can run the shower properly.

Most Shawlands flats have exactly one bathroom, so the big worry is usually how long you'll be without it. We plan the order of work around that. The old suite comes out and the new pipework goes in as fast as possible, and on most jobs we can get a working toilet back at the end of the day while the tiling and finishing carry on around it. We'll tell you before we start which days the water will be off and which days you're best staying with a friend for a shower. High tenement ceilings are a bonus here too. They leave room for a tall mirror cabinet, tiling to a crisp line with a bold colour above, or a statement pendant light that would never fit in a new-build.

Then there's the close. Everything goes up and down the common stair, so we protect it, keep it clean and bag waste as we go. Shawlands streets are busy and parking can be tight, so we plan deliveries and any skip around your street. A skip on the road needs a permit from Glasgow City Council, and we'll let you know if your job needs one.

Shawlands is a short hop for us, so a survey is easy to arrange. From here we also work across neighbouring Pollokshields, Newlands and Cathcart.