Old walls, odd rooms: bathrooms in the walled town
Inside the town walls, Denbigh keeps its medieval street pattern, and the houses along it are timber-framed and stone, with a Georgian facade here and there over something much older. The bathrooms in those houses were put in long after they were built, often on a half-landing or in a former bedroom, with thick walls, sloping floors and nowhere obvious for a soil pipe. That is not a problem, but it is work that has to be planned: walls boarded flat before any tile, floors levelled before a tray or a former, waste routes found before the layout is drawn. In the Georgian townhouses on Vale Street and the Victorian terraces added at its foot after 1875 the rooms are more regular, but the plaster is old and the pipework is usually a mix of three generations.
Out on the estates off Smithfield Road, Lon Llewelyn and the north-west and east of the old town, the houses are twentieth-century semis and bungalows with a standard bathroom, which is where most of our full renovations and bath-to-shower conversions happen. And on the former North Wales Hospital site, 34 apartments are going into the Grade II* listed main building with around 300 new homes alongside: the biggest housing scheme in the Vale, and a crop of developer bathrooms that will want replacing in a few years.
Conservation area, listed buildings and the council
The walled town and the High Street are a conservation area, with a Townscape Heritage Initiative running since 2000, the Town Hall Grade II* and many listed buildings. For a bathroom that mostly means thinking about where an extractor vent comes out, keeping ducting off the street elevation, and for a listed house, checking with Denbighshire County Council before any external change. Usefully, the council's building control office is in Denbigh itself, at Caledfryn on Smithfield Road, so a building notice for new drainage or structural work is handled locally. The electrics that need certifying are done by a registered electrician we work with, and you get the certificate.
Water in the Vale
Denbigh is supplied by Dwr Cymru Welsh Water. We have not been able to confirm a published hardness figure for the LL16 zone, so we do not state one; what we measure at the survey is the pressure and flow at the bathroom, which in a hillside house on the old town's mains can be modest and decides whether a mixer shower will satisfy you or whether a pump or an electric unit is the honest answer.
Seeing tiles and suites locally
Denbigh has a Screwfix trade counter at Denbigh Retail Park for fittings and parts, but no bathroom showroom of its own. The nearest tile and bathroom showroom is Ruthin Decor in Ruthin, about eight miles up the Vale. For most Denbigh customers the easier route is that we bring samples to the house, draw the layout there and price each item on the quote so you can see what you are paying for.
What we do in Denbigh
- Full bathroom renovations in old-town houses and estate homes
- New bathrooms installed, supply and fit or fit only
- Wet rooms and walk-in showers, with the floor work old houses need
- Ensuites in townhouses and downstairs toilets under the stairs
- Accessible bathrooms and level-access showers
- Tiling, wall panels, plumbing, towel rails, fans and lighting (electrician certified)
- Repairs and resealing, including the long waste runs of converted rooms
Example scenario: a Vale Street Georgian townhouse
A brick townhouse with a first-floor bathroom in a former bedroom, lath-and-plaster walls, a floor that falls 20 millimetres across the room and a cast-iron soil pipe on the rear wall. We board the walls with cement board, level the floor, fit a 1400 by 800 low tray against the rear wall so the waste is short, a freestanding bath under the window, a wall-hung vanity and toilet on a frame, full-height tiles in the shower, a fan ducted to the rear elevation and new lighting. Eight working days.
Emergencies in Denbigh
For a same-night emergency in Denbigh, Henllan or Trefnant, a plumber nearer the town will be faster than us. Once the leak is stopped, we handle the repair and any refit, with the care the stone cottages on the hill need.