Bathroom renovation in Berlin

A bathroom is the job where cutting corners shows up soonest. Small room, has to stay watertight, gets used every day, and has to hold a flat tiled finish against walls that were never built flat. Nearly every bathroom I get called in to put right failed for the same reason: somebody tiled onto a substrate that wasn’t ready.

What’s included

The whole room, strip-out to final seal. Taking out the old suite and finishes, making good the walls and floor, first-fix electrics, substrate prep and levelling, tanking the wet areas, wall and floor tiling, second-fix electrics, fitting the sanitaryware and furniture, sealing, and the making good afterwards.

That includes fitting the suite. Shower, bath, toilet, basin, taps, wastes and the trap — if the pipework and drainage are already where they need to be, I connect it all up and you don’t need anyone else.

Where I stop is moving the plumbing. New supply lines, a soil pipe that has to shift, drainage going somewhere it isn’t now — that’s a plumber’s job. If your bathroom needs it, I get one in at first fix while the walls are open, and I’m running the programme, so they turn up when the room is ready for them rather than three weeks early or a fortnight late.

Which is why the first question I’ll ask is whether the layout is moving. Keep the toilet and the shower where they are and it’s a one-trade job. Move them and it’s two, with the cost and the permission that come with it.

How the job actually runs

The order matters more than anything else in a bathroom.

1. Survey. I look at what’s there and, where I can, at what’s behind it. Old bathrooms hide a lot.
2. Strip out. Suite, tiles, and usually the screed and whatever passed for tanking. Noisiest, dirtiest stage, and the shortest.
3. First fix. Electrics go in while the walls are open, and any pipework that’s moving goes in at the same time. Every socket, light, extractor, shower position and towel rail has to be decided before this point — change your mind afterwards and the walls come open again.
4. Substrate. Levelling, boarding and repairing the wall surfaces. Nobody photographs this stage and it’s the one that decides whether the tiling looks right.
5. Tanking. Liquid membrane to the shower and splash zones, taped at the junctions and corners. Not optional.
6. Tiling. Walls and floors, set out from the line you see when you walk in rather than from a corner.
7. Second fix. Suite fitted and connected, electrics terminated, furniture hung.
8. Seal and make good. Silicone, trims, touching in, and the room cleaned.

Berlin bathrooms, and what’s usually behind them

Most Altbau flats weren’t built with a bathroom in them. They got added later, carved out of a hallway or the corner of a bigger room, which is why so many Berlin bathrooms are an awkward shape with the soil pipe somewhere inconvenient. It’s also why moving the layout is more of an undertaking here than people expect.

What I routinely find: walls out of plumb by centimetres rather than millimetres, so a big tile that’s level at one end sits proud at the other. Lime plaster that won’t reliably hold a modern fixing. Timber floors with sand or rubble fill between the joists, which moves, and has to be sorted before a rigid tiled floor goes over it. Circuits with no earth and no RCD, in a room where you’d now expect both. Old bitumen, or nothing at all, where the tanking should be.

None of that is unusual and none of it is a disaster. It does mean a real quote for a Berlin bathroom includes prep work that a quote for a new-build wouldn’t.

How long it takes

Rough guide: a straightforward refit keeping the existing layout runs two to three weeks on site. Move the layout, or rebuild the floor, and it’s more like three to five — partly the extra work, partly fitting a plumber’s two visits into the programme.

Neither figure includes lead time on tiles and sanitaryware, which is usually what actually delays a bathroom. Order early. The commonest cause of overrun isn’t the work, it’s waiting on someone to choose a tile.

What moves the price

Roughly in order:

• Whether the layout changes. Keeping the drainage where it is takes out a whole stage of work, a second trade, and most of the risk.
• Substrate condition. A floor that has to be rebuilt or a wall that needs re-boarding is real work before a single tile gets cut.
• Tile format and finish. Large-format porcelain wants a flatter substrate, more prep and slower setting out. Mosaic is slow for the opposite reason.
• The state of the electrics. A new circuit run back to the consumer unit is a different job from moving a socket.
• Access. Fourth floor, no lift, narrow stair — that’s time on every bag of materials and every bag of waste.
• Sanitaryware. Entirely your call, and it can vary tenfold without changing my labour at all.

I won’t price a bathroom down the phone. Send a few photos and tell me whether the layout is staying put — I can tell you which of the above applies, then come and look properly.