Chip Repair

Before Chip Repair - 1

After Chip Repair - 1

Before Chip Repair - 2

After Chip Repair - 2

Fixture repair service: chips, scratches, dings, pings and cracks.

There are a number of steps in the procedure: first of all the area to be repaired is treated with an adhesion promoter to hold the filler in place. The chip is then filled and the filler faired off so that the original contour is restored. We then build the colour that this particular bath is. Every bath is different and every bath needs a unique custom-built colour. This colour matching by eye is a highly skillful art. Not everyone who claims to do repairs can do this as we can observe from the fact that 20% of the repairs we do have previously been attempted by someone else. Colour matching is necessary to make the repair disappear. Once the colour is matched the area of the repair is treated with another adhesion promoter to hold the new enamel on. The new enamel is then air brushed on for the first time. This is then wiped off and done again and again until we “learn” how good a repair is possible in this application, we don’t just take it on the first one unless it is clearly perfect. Once we understand how the light is going to reflect off the area and how good a repair is possible we choose one that seems the best. Further steps are then taken to vanish out the edge of the repair so that there is no transition from the original surface to the new.

Viability
It is not always a viable proposition to carry out a repair. My accountant spoke to me a couple of months ago and said, " I see you are doing some voluntary work." I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “You have been making a loss on your chip repair work! If you are doing it for pleasure - that’s fine but if you want to earn a living you will need to charge enough or not bother doing them.” What had been happening was that people always expected a repair to be cheaper than replacement and that is not necessarily always true. We were often haggled down or persuaded to do a repair for a price that made it viable for the client because, they would say - "Why should I pay £120 for a repair when I can buy a new bath from Tesco for £5.99?” Ok, that’s cheeky but I’m sure you can see where I’m coming from. This resulted in a trend of under charging because we bought into this idea that all chip repairs must be viable for the client. Anyway we have learnt that not all repairs are viable but many are. In order for us to continue to offer this valuable service for the circumstances that it is the cheapest option we have to charge correctly. Often the bath or shower tray in question is expensive or surrounded by expensive tiles and the cost of replacing the item, the surrounding items and the labor involved makes a £150 chip repair ideal. We can still do multiple bath repairs in hotels for about £75 each but we need to do quite a lot in a daily batch for this price. Most repairs fall between £95 and £150 depending on the logistics. The size of the damage does not make that much difference to the cost but multiple chips in the one bath can.

Call us and find out the cost of your repair to see if it is going to work for you.

Valuable Service
Most of our work is carried out for builders of new property or tradesmen and sometimes-insurance companies. For a builder the chip may only become noticeable after the site has been tidied up and the cost and inconvenience of taking a shower tray out, particularly if the property is about to be sold is prohibitive when compared to a simple repair. Tradesmen - particularly tilers can have mishaps while working around bathroom fixtures so chips in plastic baths made by falling tiles or tools is common place. In many cases both the insurance company and client will prefer a repair that causes less upheaval and is less expensive.

Tradesmen:client awareness and approval
If you are a contractor or tradesman and a client has picked up on some damage to a fixture and you wish to repair it for them you should get their approval for the repair and explain the standard achievable. There is no point in instructing us, hoping they will accept a repair, when the client has an issue with you and has decided he wants a replacement fixture come what may. It is unfair to turn around to us and say they are not happy with it, as if we are at fault, when they are actually upset with you.

If you wish us to carry out a repair in a clients property without them knowing that there is damage and that a repair is being done you need to arrange it so that we do not meet the client because we have a policy of being totally honest and are not going to pretend to them that we are doing something else.

In an effort to keep the cost down we also have a policy for these one off small repairs which is that the person who instructs us is the one who is responsible for making payment on site at the time of the repair. It is not viable to open accounts and follow through with billing and collections as this usually takes longer than the repair itself. This of course does not apply to the larger companies who use us consistently.