A template in the iPhone app. It opens a 10-item checklist under the editable project name Bathroom refresh.
How to open itMeasure, then settle the layout
The first question is whether the layout is staying. If it is, the existing positions constrain what will fit and the project is largely a swap. If it is moving, that is a different and larger piece of work, and the price of the fixtures stops being the thing that decides the schedule.
- The room itself: wall lengths, ceiling height, and anything that eats floor space such as a boxed pipe or a sloping ceiling.
- The doorway and the route in. A bath that fits the room but not the landing is still a bath you cannot use.
- Where the existing waste and water connections are, and whether you intend to keep them.
- The basin and toilet you want, with their real dimensions and projection — not just their photographs.
- The tiled area, measured wall by wall, and whether the tiles you like are available in one batch.
- Whether the floor is coming up, because that decides the order everything else happens in.
Running short on tiles is awkward to put right: shade and size can vary between production batches, so the quantity question is worth answering once, before ordering, rather than halfway through.
Agree who supplies what
A bathroom list is half fixtures and half small parts, and the small parts are the ones that stop a day’s work. Whoever is fitting it will have a view on which of them they supply, and that conversation belongs before the order rather than after it.
Ask before ordering the small parts
The waste kit, the isolation valves and the sealant are on the template because they are needed, not because they are yours to specify unadvised. The person doing the work is the one who can choose them to suit what is already there, and may be supplying them.
Confirm the fixtures go together
Taps, basins and wastes come in combinations that do not all match. Send the actual product pages to whoever is fitting them before you buy, rather than describing what you have found.
Book the work, then buy
A fitter’s start date is not yours alone to move. Once it is fixed, every other line has a date to work back from, instead of an open-ended pile of boxes.
Keep the paperwork with the item
Order numbers and delivery dates are worth keeping next to the thing they belong to, so a missing delivery is one place to look rather than an inbox search.
Where that lives in the app. An item holds a price, a priority, a deadline, a link to the product page and free-text Notes, and can be marked as purchased. That is enough to record “ordered, arriving Thursday, fitter supplying the valves” on the line it concerns. Plannli does not contact a supplier or follow a delivery for you.
The order the decisions have to happen in
Bathroom items divide cleanly into the ones that fix the layout and the ones that fit around it. Deciding them in that order is what stops a mirror and a cabinet being chosen before the basin position is final.
- First
The layout, then the basin, the toilet and the shower or bath. These set every dimension that follows.
- Then
Tiles and anything fixed to a wall or floor, once the fixtures are known and the surfaces behind them are decided.
- Last
The mirror, the cabinet and the towel rail. They fix to finished walls, and they are the easiest things to change your mind about.
The finishing items are also the ones to keep out of the room while the work happens. A towel rail bought in the first week is a towel rail stored somewhere for three.
The days the bathroom is out of action
One bathroom means one period without it, and that period — not the order of the shopping — is what the plan has to work around.
Everything on site before day one
Sanitaryware is bulky and can carry a lead time. Aim to have it all in the house, unpacked and checked, before work starts: a cracked basin discovered on the first morning holds up everything behind it.
Check deliveries as they arrive
Unpack and inspect when something lands, not when it is needed. Reporting damage inside the retailer’s own returns window is a simpler conversation than raising it a month later, so it is worth knowing what that window is when the order goes in.
Plan the days without it
Where everyone washes, and for how long, is a genuine household decision. It is worth building the schedule around it rather than discovering it on day two.
Leave a gap at the end
Finishing work needs time before the room goes back into use, so the last day of work and the first day of the bathroom are not the same date.
Open it as a plan
Everything above works on paper. If you would rather keep it on your phone — with each line carrying its own price, priority, notes, deadline and a link to the thing you found — the iPhone app ships a Bathroom template that starts you with a 10-item checklist instead of an empty project.
- Add a project
In the app, tap the + control in the centre of the tab bar. Its accessibility label is “Add a project”.
- Start from a template
The “New project” sheet opens. Use the “Start from a template” row rather than typing a name into an empty project.
- Pick Bathroom
Choose the “Bathroom” chip. The sheet says how many starter items it will add and pre-fills the project name, which you can edit here.
- Create project
Tap “Create project”. The project opens with its checklist already written, and every line is yours to rename, delete or re-prioritise.
Bathroom is the chip in the template picker. The project name arrives pre-filled as Bathroom refresh, and that part is yours to change before or after you create the project.
What the Bathroom template starts you with
These are suggestions, and on a bathroom several of them may be supplied by whoever is fitting it. Keep the line, note who is buying it, and delete only what the project genuinely does not need.
- Basin & tapsUrgent
- Toilet
- Shower or bath
- Waste kit
- Sealant
- Isolation valves
- Tiles
- Mirror
- Storage / cabinet
- Towel rail
What you can change. Every line is a suggestion: rename it, delete it, or add something the template never mentioned. Priority is one of Urgent, Normal or Can Wait, so nothing has to be deleted to be put off.
Plannli is an iPhone app. Nothing on this page needs it.