What is the best time to renovate a bathroom?

The best time to renovate a bathroom is when you have a good fitter booked and a plan for living without the room, and that means starting earlier than most people think. Decent bathroom fitters across South London are booked two to three months ahead. If you want the work finished before Christmas, you should be getting quotes in September.

Season matters a bit, but less than the lead time. Plaster, tanking and grout dry faster in warmer months, so spring and summer jobs run slightly quicker. We fit bathrooms in Victorian terraces right through winter though. It just means allowing an extra day or two for drying and keeping the heating on, which we build into the programme from the start.

The bigger question is how you cope during the work. If you have a second bathroom or a downstairs WC, we schedule the job so it stays in use throughout. In a one-bathroom house we keep the toilet working overnight for most of the job, but expect a few days without a shower midway through. Some clients time the messiest week around a holiday, which works well.

For landlords the answer is simple: the void between tenancies. With an empty flat, trades run full days without working around anyone, so a refit that takes three weeks in an occupied house gets done in two. We do a lot of these in Lewisham and Bromley. The trick is booking the survey while the outgoing tenant is still in place, so materials are ordered and we start the day after they leave. Every day of void costs you rent.