Most people have enough skills to replace a bathroom suite themselves. Sometimes you do not need a complete overhaul of the room, but the furniture may be past its best, or a horrible colour. Whatever the reason, most people will need new items at some point.
I hope you find this guide useful, and it should give you the confidence to replace the bathroom fittings yourself, or at least encourage you to try. What’s the worst that could happen? Someone else can take over if you get stuck.
Luckily, most furniture comes in standard sizes so you should have no trouble finding a new suite to replace the old one without big changes to the plumbing.
Remove the old Suite
Locate and close the main stop tap to the house. You should be aware of its location in case you ever need to turn it off in a rush; if there is a leak, for example. Sometimes they are very stiff through lack of use so use grips if you need to. Turn it clockwise until it closes, and then run the taps until the water stops flowing.
Look below the taps, and you will see that the pipes are connected to them by joints with large nuts. Undo it, and the pipes should come free. The waste pipes too are connected with a very large nut, Undo it with some adjustable grips, remember, it is anti-clockwise to unscrew things.
Take the old suite away and clean up any mess you have made.
Flexible Connections
Read on for the best tip you will ever hear.
- Cut all of the pipes about three inches shorter than they are. Use a pipe cutter or a hacksaw.
- Using two spanners, install straight compression fittings on the ends of the pipes. They consist of a metal olive that is crushed to make a tight seal when you tighten the joint.
- Attach flexible hoses to the open ends of the joints. Screw them on and tighten them.
The new suite
- Fix the wall mounted vanity units in place. You will need to drill new holes for them as it is unlikely the fixings will be in the same place.
- Assemble the new legs and fix them to the bath, and then move it into position.
- Put the pan in place and screw it to the floor.
- Connect the new cistern to the pan and screw it to the wall.
Reconnect the fittings
- The taps are secured to the bath and basin by a locknut from below.
- Now you will enjoy the benefit of using flexible hose connections. Screw them onto the threads at the bottom of the taps.
- Re-attach the waste pipes. You may need to adjust the plastic pipework a bit, but that is easy to do. Use push-on joints if you have to replace any.
- Cut and fit the bath panel.
- Open the stop tap.
As you can see, using flexible hose joints makes the job an easy one. There is no need to alter the copper pipework in tight spaces now you know the secret. When you show off your new suite to friends and family, don’t forget to tell them that you learned how to do it here.
Photo credit: emily @ go haus go via cc
