Bathroom tiling in Barking and Becontree. Walls and floors tiled properly, wet areas tanked before a tile goes up, grout and silicone finished clean.
A great deal of Barking is Becontree - the interwar estate that is still the biggest council estate ever built in the country - and those bathrooms were designed small and have mostly been reworked at least once. What is behind the old tiles is usually the question, and it is worth answering before quoting rather than after.
In the Barking Riverside flats the walls behind the bath are usually plasterboard on metal studs and perfectly flat, so the job is about waterproofing and choosing a tile the board can carry. In the Becontree houses it is the opposite: old plaster that bows, and levelling that can take as long as the tiling itself.
Send a photo or a quick video of the room on WhatsApp, or get a free fixed quote, no obligation, and we’ll tell you straight what it needs.
Shower and wet zones sealed with a proper tanking system first. It is the step nobody sees and the only thing between the water and your joists, and in a small Becontree bathroom there is nowhere for a leak to hide.
Old tiles off, walls made flat and primed. Tiles laid onto an uneven wall show every hollow behind them, and on an estate bathroom reworked twice already the wall is rarely as simple as it looks.
Cuts planned so full tiles land where you look. In a small room that means the awkward cuts go behind the door and under the bath rather than beside the basin.
Grout worked in properly and silicone run in one clean bead at every change of plane. It is where a tiling job is judged, because it is the finish everyone runs a hand along.
Big porcelain tiles back-buttered and levelled with clips, so the edges sit flush and nothing sounds hollow when tapped.
Always, and on an estate bathroom that has been reworked before it matters even more - you rarely know what the last person did behind the tiles. Adhesive and grout are not waterproof; the tanking behind them is.
A standard Barking bathroom is two to three days for walls and floor, plus a day either side if the old tiles have to come off and the walls need making good. We tell you which before we start.
Both, and everywhere between - Barking, Becontree, Upney, Creekmouth and out to the Riverside development. They are very different housing and we quote them differently, because a 1920s estate bathroom and a new-build flat are not the same job.
Only if they are firmly bonded and flat, and even then it adds thickness around the bath, basin and window reveal. In most Becontree bathrooms taking the old tiles off is the better job, because it lets the wall be checked and tanked properly.