Bathroom Restoration & Refurbishment in Brighton and Hove
Bathrooms fitted and restored with an understanding of the fabric they sit inside: solid walls, bungaroosh and lime plaster behind the tiling, suspended timber floors and the moisture behaviour of older buildings.
This page describes our bathroom restoration and refurbishment service for older and period properties in Brighton and Hove: what we do, how the work differs from a standard bathroom fit-out, and how a bathroom is approached when the walls, floors and drainage belong to a solid-wall building rather than a modern structure.
It is a supporting service rather than our core specialism. Bungaroosh wall repair, lime rendering and damp diagnosis come first in the fabric of a Brighton period home, and bathroom work is carried out with the same construction knowledge applied to the room where modern services meet old fabric most directly.
Why a Period Bathroom Is a Different Job
A bathroom refit in a modern house is largely a question of fit-out: units, finishes and connections onto a known structure. In a Regency or Victorian building in Brighton or Hove, the same project is construction work with a bathroom at the end of it.
The room sits inside a building whose walls are solid and permeable — brick, flint, bungaroosh or lime plaster — whose ground floor is likely a suspended timber deck over a ventilated void, and whose drainage routes were established long before modern fixtures were imagined. Every decision in the bathroom, from tanking to tile adhesive, either respects that construction or works against it.
What we find behind a typical period bathroom includes:
- Bungaroosh, brick or flint walls with lime plaster, sometimes hidden under modern gypsum and tile
- Suspended timber floors with joist ends built into external walls
- Original cast iron soil stacks and lead or pitch-fibre waste runs
- Lath-and-plaster ceilings and partition walls that cannot carry modern board weights unaltered
- Salt-contaminated plaster at the base of walls from decades of rising and penetrating moisture
- Evidence of previous refits: patchwork tanking, cement backings over lime, and sealed-up ventilation
None of this prevents a modern bathroom being installed. It does mean the preparation, materials and sequence must be specified for the construction actually present, rather than applied generically as they would be by a contractor who never looks past the tiles.
How Bathroom Refits Go Wrong in Older Buildings
The bathroom generates more moisture than any other room in the house, and the refit itself disturbs the fabric more than any other routine project. The two together make it the single most common origin of the defects we are later asked to diagnose.
The failure sequence is rarely the fault of the fixtures. It is what the refit did to the building around them.
The patterns we find most often are:
- 1Impermeable tanking and dense cement backings applied to breathable walls, trapping moisture in the fabric until the plaster and masonry behind the tiles decay
- 2Leaks and condensation running within sealed voids, invisible until finishes fail
- 3Joists notched beyond their tolerance or corroded fixings attacking timber, discovered only when the floor becomes uneven
- 4Extraction omitted or ducted into the void, loft or straight through a wall cavity with no termination
- 5Extract vents cut through prominent elevations without consent, or with detailing unsympathetic to the frontage
- 6Hard, modern grout and rigid adhesives applied over flexible lime substrates, cracking and letting water behind the tiling
Each of these is avoidable at specification stage. None is cheap to remedy once the room is finished and the tiles are on.
What Our Bathroom Work Includes
We undertake complete bathroom projects in period properties: assessment, strip-out, fabric repair, services and finishes. The scope is assembled around what the building needs rather than a fixed package.
A full project can include:
- Pre-strip-out assessment of walls, floor structure, drainage routes and existing moisture behaviour
- Removal and correct disposal of old sanitaryware, finishes and obsolete pipework
- Repairs to bungaroosh, brick and flint walls, and reinstatement of lime plaster where modern gypsum has failed
- Joist, boarding and floor-structure repairs, keeping ventilation to any sub-floor void intact
- Replumbing of supply and waste runs, including replacement of cast iron or lead where it is beyond service
- Modern, water-efficient sanitaryware, brassware and shower systems installed to specification
- Breathable-compatible tanking used selectively where it is genuinely required
- Tiling with flexible adhesives and grouts matched to the substrate, or repair of original tiling where it is sound
- Extract ventilation designed, routed and terminated properly, with consent checked where the building is listed or in a conservation area
- Finishing: lime-compatible plasters, painted finishes, timber floor repair and finishing
Where a bathroom project exposes fabric problems beyond the room — wall failure, sub-floor decay, external ground levels — we stop, record what has been found, and quote the repair as its own scope of work rather than patching it invisibly behind new tiles.
Diagnosing Before Fitting
We do not price a bathroom refit from a brochure. The quotation follows an assessment of the room and the structure it sits in, because the same fixtures cost very different amounts to install over a sound bungaroosh wall with lime plaster and over a wet, salt-contaminated one.
Our normal sequence is to:
- 1Establish the construction of the walls, floor and ceiling, including what lies behind current finishes where access allows
- 2Identify the existing plumbing and drainage routes, and record their material and condition
- 3Assess moisture evidence in the room — condensation patterns, staining, salt contamination — and distinguish bathroom-caused moisture from building-caused moisture
- 4Check the sub-floor void where one exists: ventilation, joist condition and any services crossing it
- 5Record original features worth retaining — cast iron baths, geometric tiling, timber floors, sanitaryware — and assess their condition honestly
- 6Establish the consent position if the building is listed or in a conservation area
- 7Set out in writing what will be retained, repaired and replaced, and what sits outside this scope
Where the evidence shows a sound room, the assessment is short and the quotation reflects it. Where the bathroom has been concealing problems, the client learns that before the tiles are ordered, not after they come off.
Photographs help us prepare for this assessment before we visit. The tiles, the fittings and the layout matter less than the base of the walls, the floor perimeter, the soil stack and anything that already looks damp.
Materials and Finishes, Chosen for the Fabric
Material selection is where a specialist refit and a generic one separate most clearly. The walls of a period building manage moisture by evaporation; the finishes applied to them either support that mechanism or defeat it.
The choices we make deliberately include:
- Lime-based plasters and renders for reinstatement to solid walls, matched to the existing fabric rather than defaulting to gypsum
- Tanking confined to genuinely wet areas, with breathable finishes permitted elsewhere in the room
- Flexible, deformable adhesives and grouts over substrates that move, rather than rigid systems that crack and let water behind
- Breathable paints on solid walls, and moisture-tolerant finishes only where ventilation keeps up with the moisture the room generates
- Extract ventilation specified on the room's real usage, ducted to the outside and terminated properly
- Reclaimed or period-pattern replacements where original features are beyond repair, chosen to match the character of the building
Where a client wants a modern aesthetic — a walk-in shower, a wall-hung basin, large-format tiling — we can usually deliver it. The modern look is not the problem; impermeable specification applied without knowledge of the wall behind it is.
We explain the reasoning behind each material choice in the quotation, so the client knows what they are getting and why it differs from the bathroom shop's standard package.
Listed Buildings, Conservation Areas and Extract Ventilation
Bathroom work in a listed building needs more than building regulations compliance. Internal alterations — removing an original bath, partition or tiled finish — can require listed building consent, and an extract vent through a principal elevation can affect the building's special character.
In conservation areas across Brighton and Hove, external alterations affecting the appearance of the frontage may also be controlled. We establish the position with the local authority before work starts, design ventilation routes that respect the elevation, and never proceed on the assumption that like-for-like is automatically permitted.
Areas We Cover
We carry out bathroom restoration and refurbishment in period properties throughout Brighton, Hove and the East Sussex coast, from Regency and Victorian terraces to converted properties with a mixture of historic and later fabric.
- Brighton
- Hove
- Portslade
- Southwick
- Shoreham-by-Sea
- Lewes
- Newhaven
- Seaford
- Eastbourne
- Peacehaven
- Saltdean
- Rottingdean
Thinking About a Bathroom Project?
If you are planning a bathroom refit in an older property, or a previous refit has left damp, failed tiles or uneven floors, send Safe-Bricks photographs of the room for an initial review.
Useful photographs include:
- The room overall, plus each wall — especially the base of the walls and the ceiling junction
- The soil stack and any visible pipework, inside and outside
- The floor, including any loose boards, thresholds and the gap under skirtings if visible
- Anything that looks damp, stained or cracked, however long it has been there
- Original features you would like to keep, so we can assess what is realistic
Photographs let us judge the likely construction and prepare properly for the assessment; most bathroom projects still need an inspection before work can be specified and priced.
Bathroom restoration in period properties: common questions
Not sure where to start?
Send us photographs of the area of concern. It is the most straightforward first step — we will look at what you can see and advise on the appropriate next steps.