One of the most common questions we get asked — and one of the hardest to answer honestly on the internet — is “how much does a bathroom renovation cost?”
Search for it and you’ll find everything from “£2,000 to £15,000” to “it depends.” Neither of those is particularly useful if you’re trying to work out whether your budget is realistic.
So here’s something more useful. A real job, completed this week in Sandbach, with a proper breakdown of what was involved and what it cost.
The job: a small ensuite in Sandbach
The customer had a small ensuite off the master bedroom that hadn’t been touched in years. The brief was to modernise it completely and make it feel as spacious as possible — not easy when you’re working with a compact room.
Here’s what the job involved:
- A dividing wall removed to reconfigure the layout
- Artex ceiling removed and the ceiling reskimmed
- Walls reskimmed and fully redecorated
- New recessed downlights installed throughout
- High-powered extractor fan fitted
- Frameless quadrant shower enclosure with an ultra-low profile tray — chosen specifically to open the room up visually
- Wall-hung vanity unit installed
- Bespoke towel storage shelf fitted underneath the vanity
- Stuart Turner 2-bar shower pump installed
- Cold water tank in the loft upgraded to 50 gallons to support the pump properly
Total cost: £8,923
The job took 7 days from start to finish.
Why small rooms often cost more than you’d expect
This is something worth understanding before you get any quotes in. Small bathrooms and ensuites are actually harder to work in than larger rooms — and that has a direct impact on how long the job takes.
When the space is tight, only one person can work at a time. You can’t have a tiler and a plumber in a small ensuite simultaneously — there simply isn’t room. Tasks that might overlap in a larger bathroom have to happen sequentially. That adds days to the programme, which is reflected in the labour cost.
It’s one of the reasons we’re always a bit cautious about “small bathroom” quotes that seem surprisingly cheap. Either the contractor hasn’t thought through the practical constraints of working in a tight space, or they’re planning to cut corners somewhere.
What drove the cost on this particular job
A few things pushed this one beyond a straightforward suite replacement:
The structural work. Removing a dividing wall isn’t complicated, but it has to be done properly — checked for any load-bearing implications, made good, and fully plastered out before anything else can happen. You can’t rush plaster drying time, so this adds to the overall programme even when the work itself is straightforward.
Artex removal. Older Cheshire properties — and Sandbach has a good stock of them — often have artex ceilings. Removing it properly, skimming, and getting a clean finish takes time and skill. It’s one of those jobs that’s invisible when it’s done well and very obvious when it isn’t.
The shower pump and loft tank. Fitting a Stuart Turner 2-bar pump is a significant upgrade in terms of shower performance — but it only works properly if the cold water tank in the loft can keep up with it. On this job, the existing tank was too small, so we upgraded it to 50 gallons at the same time. We wrote about why this matters in a separate article — you can read it here — but the short version is: fitting the pump without sorting the tank would have given the customer a pump that kept cutting out. We only fit Stuart Turner pumps, and we only fit them when the system can support them properly.
The frameless enclosure. A frameless quadrant enclosure costs more than a framed one. On a small room, though, it earns its money — removing the visual weight of a frame makes a noticeable difference to how spacious the finished bathroom feels. Combined with the ultra-low profile tray, the shower area reads as part of the room rather than a box stuck in the corner.
So what’s a “normal” bathroom renovation cost in Cheshire?
Based on the jobs we carry out regularly across Middlewich, Sandbach, Northwich, Knutsford, Holmes Chapel and Winsford, here are honest ballpark figures for 2025/26:
Straightforward full bathroom renovation (like-for-like suite replacement, standard tiling, no structural work): £6,500 – £8,000
Full bathroom renovation with some additional work (reskimming, layout changes, shower pump): £8,000 – £10,000
Ensuite installation (new ensuite created from an existing bedroom space): £7,000 – £10,000 depending on what’s involved in creating the space
Wet room conversion: £8,500 – £12,000 — the full waterproofing system and drainage requirements push the cost up, but done properly it’s built to last decades
These are real numbers based on real jobs. They’re not the lowest quotes you’ll find, and they’re not the highest either. What they represent is the cost of doing the job properly — with Mapei waterproofing on every wet area, branded products from established manufacturers, and a 12-month workmanship guarantee on everything we do.
What the quotes that come in lower are usually missing
If you get a quote significantly below these figures, it’s worth asking a few questions. In our experience, the gap usually comes from one or more of the following:
- Waterproofing not included — or a cheap product used instead of a proper tanking membrane
- The bathroom suite priced at bare minimum, with quality problems that appear six months later
- Labour underpriced because the contractor hasn’t properly costed the time involved, which often leads to the job dragging on or being rushed at the end
- No allowance for what’s found when the old suite comes out — and on older properties, there’s almost always something
A fixed-price, itemised quote protects you from all of this. Ours typically run to 4-7 pages and describe every element of the work. If something unexpected comes up once we’ve opened the walls, we tell you before we proceed — not after.
Thinking about a new bathroom or ensuite in Sandbach or the surrounding area?
We cover the whole of the CW11 postcode and the surrounding areas. Give Martin a call on 07734 703414 for a free, no-obligation quote. We’ll visit the property, take a proper look at what’s involved, and get a detailed written quote back to you.
Cheshire Bathroom Fitters — based in Middlewich, working across Cheshire for over 20 years.
