Recommended bathroom installer - Darren Roberts of Castle Plumbing

[LisaSam]

Darren has installed three bathrooms for us now. One in our previous flat, and two in the new house. When he installed the bathroom in our last flat, he bailed us out of a disaster of an install with a person who turned out to be quite the cowboy. I was out of the country for work and my partner was having to manage a refurb and a new job. The person we originally hired left the bathroom in a right state (we'd asked him not to come back about a quarter of the way through).

Darren was working weekends at the time to get another bathroom install done when he said it would be, despite some unexpected obstacles. But as he happened to be a couple roads over doing this, and we were in such a pickle, he said he'd come round to have a quick look. I think he did it in part cause it offended him, what the other (supposed) tradesperson did, and Darren is just awfully kind. Indeed he put in a couple of quick fixes to get the loo installed properly and agreed to do the minimum we needed so that the other work could continue. He also finished the remainder of the install as soon as he could fit us in.

After that, he installed a new bathroom/wetroom for our neighbour, who was also delighted with his work, and friends of ours. Then, when we moved, he installed two new bathrooms in our new house, including all the tiling work. As I've written in another recommendation here (in response to a query, rather than a standalone recommendation like this one), both installs had some interesting challenges for Darren, which he handled with his usual resolve to make sure everything is to a high standard. He?s very particular any making everything look good.

As other rennovations were ongoing during one of the installs, Darren pretty near flat out refused to install the new loo (leaving the old one in place instead), because he was worried that the nice new loo might get dirty or damaged if he installed at that point. He did do the tiling and when he finished, he covered it with cardboard, taped that down and put a sign on the bathroom door asking other tradespeople to keep everything clean please in the nice new bathroom (photo attached). I was thinking bleach will clear up anything. But no. Do not mess with Darren?s new install. The new loo was installed later on.

Those two installs were in the Spring 2020 (photos attached) and I wanted to write this post now because we recently asked Darren if he could come by sometime if he was in the neighbourhood to look at a few small issues we'd been having, as sometimes happens with new installs. There was a small drip from behind one of the sinks sometimes, which it turns out is because the actual basin isn't totally level (a manufacturing issue) so the seal around the main tap wasn't proving to be completely watertight. Darren talked me through approaches to solving it and fixed it. There was also a bit of leakage around a component of one of the showers (again, more an issue I'd place with the manufacturer), which Darren promptly fixed. And he adjusted some of the settings one of the loos to make it flush more forcefully.

When coming over to sort the above, Darren was very professional and conscientious, as ever. We hadn't expected that he'd be over anytime soon, just when he happened to be around sometime, but he was over within the week. He arrived with a facemask on (much appreciated). We talked over the issues and he sorted it all. To be honest, I wasn't sure if he was going to charge a call-out fee, given that the issues we more with the manufacturers than his install. But nope. Just making sure people are happy with his work. No fee.

With the flat install, it was exactly the same, only with that case there was an install issue with a radiator (he'd let someone else do it under his supervision as he was teaching them) and some water had subsequently leaked into the flat below. Once alerted, Darren was over super quick, immediately recognised that the install was at fault, said so, apologised profusely and then went over and above to keep everyone happy. Even arranged for a new bathroom ceiling to be installed in the flat below us (where the water had leaked), and then made sure it was freshly painted. This was a significant upgrade for the tenants in that flat whose landlord barely looked after the place.

Wow, I've written loads... but hey, it's worth it. As is waiting for Darren, in our experience. We planned a fair amount of the rest of the house rennovation around his availability if I'm honest about it. Knowing more about the house then I did at the start, I'm particularly grateful for some decisions he guided us towards for the loft bathroom, e.g. concerning the installation of waterproof panelling. It can be unnerving having so much work done to your home, and it's less tense when you have confidence that a tradesperson working on it takes what they do so much to heart and wants their customers to be happy with the end result.

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