The Difficulty of Finding Workmen for Our Bathroom Refurbishment

When we moved to our house, nearly 5 years ago now, we always knew that we would have to look refitting the bathroom. The jacuzzi bath has never worked and the shower isn’t really a shower, it is more of a trickle. In fact, may be that is what I should start calling it! Anyway, the biggest problem that we didn’t account for was the difficulty of finding workmen.

The Difficulty of Finding Workmen – for any job!

We have had to find a number of different people for many types of jobs around our house. There have been plumbers, window cleaners, gardeners, TV repair men. In fact, the list is endless! Trying to find someone reputable has been quite a task.

The main issue that we have experienced though, is having them come back to us – either once they have visited us or even when they have quoted and we have actually given them the go ahead!

The most difficult one to locate in all of this has been a decent plumber and a decent bathroom fitter. The plumber that we did find never comes back to us. The same can be said for the bathroom fitters we have contacted.

Prepping for a Bathroom Refurbishment

Much of the donkey work was done by Ross. He spent a lot of time measuring and researching for different types of fittings including baths, taps and showers. We were even looking at replacing the lighting and I found some beautiful swan neck lanterns over on the Urban Cottage Industries site. A little different from the usual bathroom lights.

Initially we wanted to get a separate bath and shower and relocate the toilet in order to accommodate this. We gave two different fitters these details when we asked for their quote. Only one of them came back to us.

No Response from the Workmen

When we realised that having the bath and shower separate meant that we would not only have less space, but also less light, we decided that this was a bad idea and changed the spec.

We then emailed the workmen to tell him that we would like a specific bath with shower unit and we weren’t going to make them separate. This was quite a few weeks ago and he hasn’t come back to us since!

What Do We Do Now?

The thing we have found – and what irks us the most – is that no one has the decency to come back to you. It leaves us not knowing where we stand.

If someone doesn’t want to do the job then I would rather they said instead of just leaving us hanging. To me, this is totally unprofessional and doesn’t form any kind of trust that they will get the job done in a timely fashion.

We have pretty much run out of options now so, if anyone has any ideas of how we can find a workman who will actually do what they say  – then please do let us know! I have tried the recommendation sites and they all seem to be a dead end too!

In collaboration with Urban Cottage Industries