A tired shower cubicle in Kirkcaldy replaced, without redoing the whole room

Before and after

Before

After

When you don't need a whole new bathroom

If the suite is fine and the tiles are fine, ripping the lot out to fix one shower is a lot of money and a week without a bathroom for no good reason. Replacing just the cubicle is a fraction of the cost and usually a couple of days, and the result is a shower that works and looks new inside a room you were happy with.

We will tell you which one you actually need. Sometimes the shower is a symptom of a bigger problem behind the wall, and sometimes, as here, it is just an old shower.

What was wrong with the old one

The before photo says most of it. The tray had discoloured and the sealant round it had failed, which is what the black mould in the corners is. Behind the old tiles the adhesive had let go in places, so water had been getting behind them. None of that comes back from cleaning; it has to come out.

Once the alcove was bare the walls were made good and lined with panels, which give a sealed, joint-free surface inside the enclosure where the water actually hits.

The shower itself

The old fixed head has been replaced with a thermostatic bar mixer running a square rainfall head on a riser and a separate handset. Thermostatic means the temperature holds when someone runs a tap elsewhere, and the handset makes rinsing the enclosure down a ten-second job rather than a chore.