Paphos Life

Hi

We are replacing our bathrooms later in the year and wondered where to look for new sanitary ware.

All thoughts and experiences welcome!

Jon

We used a family firm, whose name escapes me now. But they are near Papantonios traffic lights on Polis road.
If you come Down Polis road with Paps on the right, at the traffic lights TURN RIGHT.. In about 150 yards is a turning on the Right, take that and the shop is about 75 yrds on the left hand side..
The shop actually goes between two roads, and that entrance is the trade counter one. But walk through that, and there is a big showroom.. We got everything there, at a good price including floor tiles and wall tiles, bath, showers, sinks and all taps..

We looked everywhere, but eventually ended up buying from Paphos Home Market, they even had a standard bath with a side panel on. It is different to the ones in the UK, but once installed looks the same. It has a really heavy acrylic side and end panel - roughly the same thickness as the bath, which when installed is really sturdy. They were very helpful and we got a good price. Our old bath had dropped twice and should this one do the same we can just pop the side panel off and adjust the 6 feet, much easier than tearing it all out.

Make sure you buy and install a new plain white bathroom suite. Apperently, coloured varieties of bathroom suites put many potential buyers off from buying your property (should you decide to sell up and relocate) these days.

And how come your old bath dropped twice, mounted on six sturdy adjustable screw feet sitting on solid concrete floors? Another mystery to discuss, LOL!

Cheers- AL

The bath dropping puzzled me as well. In our bathroom there was a 4x1 put on two walls for the bath edge to sit on and concrete put between the floor and the bath..

Lee Roy Merlin, great choice and good prices...

we have ordered ours online at great discounts, but the drawback is waiting for it all to arrive. the discount on one item alone was more than paying for shipping. this was for our ensuite. while i have been waiting i looked for
bathroom sanitary ware and having been all over Paphos, the prices were expensive compared to U.K. but i went to Leroy Merlins in Nicosia and the stuff is a very good price. for instance, sink, vanity unit, shelf and mirror, €119. a full over bath enclosure including end panel, patterned, €194. i know some of the sanitary ware in Paphos is cheap, but the quality, or lack of it, shows, in my opinion.

We used the quality brand 'Roca' for the porcelain items and the taps..

Gevo on Mesogi - same side at Sports Direct but a bit further along.

Ian

darrow wrote: ↑Mon Aug 14, 2017 11:10 am we have ordered ours online at great discounts, but the drawback is waiting for it all to arrive. the discount on one item alone was more than paying for shipping. this was for our ensuite. while i have been waiting i looked for
bathroom sanitary ware and having been all over Paphos, the prices were expensive compared to U.K. but i went to Leroy Merlins in Nicosia and the stuff is a very good price. for instance, sink, vanity unit, shelf and mirror, €119. a full over bath enclosure including end panel, patterned, €194. i know some of the sanitary ware in Paphos is cheap, but the quality, or lack of it, shows, in my opinion.

Would agree that sanitary ware in Cyprus is very poor. We had to replace every WC and Cistern in a villa, even though they were brand makes, as they all cracked! Never seen that, ever, in the UK.

I think you'll find that was probably due to poor installation. Fixings overtightened and poor storage can easily lead to hairline cracks that get worse over time

Hi PaphosAL and trevnhil, Our original bath, the one that dropped, was actually held up by a batten and rubble. It looked fine when we bought our resale holiday home, apart from being a ghastly pink suite with pink tiles that looked dirty even when you cleaned them to a mirror like finish. After about 2 years it dropped about an inch on the wall side. I punched some holes in the tiled side and pushed it up with some bricks, then tidied it up. It was on the to do list anyway. We were only using the place about 4 weeks a year so this got us by for about 5 years, then it dropped again, another inch or so. We now spend a lot more time in Cyprus, semi retirement, so I tore the lot out and found the bath had just been installed with a wooden batten along the house walls and a tiled brick wall on the open side, the bath basically rested on a pile of rubble (not sand or concrete, rubble including cans, old bones, cigarette packets, stones, dirt etc.), the batten had rotted away due to improper sealing of the bath allowing water to get to it. There is a 15 - 20cm drop in the floor where the bath is and the new bath has a frame that takes that into account and 6 adjustable feet, it feels much sturdier than our bath in the UK, which is a good quality steel one.
I have seen Cyprus friends baths shift enough to require a sealing strip and even know someone that used a plunger in his flat because the bath was draining slowly, only to blow the fitting out of the drain, it was a flexi pipe held in with a silicone bung. He had to have a builder go through his outside wall to get under his bath and make good with an access panel in case he needs to do anything similar again. The tiled in baths look good, well, not in bright pink with dirty looking tiles, but if anything happens you are a bit stuffed.
We now have a plain white suite, nothing fancy, plain, neutral off white tiles. Nothing that could date or offend. We looked everywhere and found what we wanted at Paphos Home Market, but like everything it is down to what you want. I cannot fault their service and I was pleased with the price, the whole job cost around 1500 Euros, with me doing all the work. It was about 400 for the bath and side panel and 100 for the toilet and 50 odd for the sink and pedestal. I bought a lot of the tools in that (I did send a good SDS drill/ breaker over from the UK as I thought them ridiculously priced in Cyprus). I bought the tiles in the Home Market sale, with about 5 metres spare of both floor and wall tiles, in case of future needs or repairs.

mike that is one scary post!

I must admit I was shocked at what was under the bath and it was soaking wet, a bit soupy and stank to high heaven. The chisel and the sink had me chuckling for days, it was pure slapstick. But if you think about it, if the bath starts to leak for any reason, how do you get to it or even know? The friend who had a builder go in from the outside was lucky to find a good builder, the access panel looks just like a meter cabinet and if he has an issue again, he just opens the door and he can see under it. I am not a builder, just enjoy DIY projects and I learned a lot doing it. But our bathroom lasted a fairly long time, we bought the place knowing we would change it one day. We got an extra bedroom, better location and immediate title deeds by buying a resale with a pink bathroom, leaky or otherwise it served us well for a decade and we now have something we like, so I am more than happy.

As Jacs stated above, Mike, scary. But I find your tale of poor workmanship and lack of pride on behalf of some Cypriot 'builders' frightening, to be honest...

I've looked around many half-built properties in Paphos these past few years. Main thing that always amazed me were the electrical wires hanging out of the walls, awaiting second fix (sockets and switches fascias) from the sparky.

UK Lighting cable: 1.5mm2 (Cyprus: 0.75mm2
UK Ring Main cable: 2.5mm2 (Cyprus: 1.5mm2)

To me, this represents a potential fire hazard, given that you might have two or three A/C units running off the single phase ring mains, as well as your oven / grille, toaster, kettle, iron, fridge/freezer, microwave, washing machine, dishwasher, fans, and so on....

AL

It just goes to show that you need (if possible) to choose your Builder, Joiner, plumber, electrician with great care..
Re the bath scenario, if we need to get under it we can just take off the bath panel..
Now accessing the pipes under the shower trays could be difficult, ha ha..