Changing wall mounted tap

Hi. Yes you will have to remove at least the tile on which the spout is fitted. The mechanical valve unit will be behind that tile. I would advise isolating the water supply and draining the water before you remove any part of the valve or tile.

Generally, the shower would use a separate valve to the bath tap. You may get lucky and be able to find a way of detaching the current tap and spout and replacing them but not guaranteed. Easier to try this if you know who made the original and can trace replacements. If you can’t get the decorative bits then you would need to take at least one tile off the wall to get in and plumb a new valve. If you want a shower as well then you could be talking about another fairly large valve and associated pipework hidden in the wall, which is a far bigger job. At this point you may as well take the whole wall facing off and start again. Depending on the wall construction you may also want to consider removing the bath to avoid damaging it while new plumbing is done.

Hi The most important thing to consider are the tiles. You can put pretty well any sort of tap on a wall but usually it is necessary to break some of the tiles in the process. Have you any spares ? It is virtually impossible to match up existing tiles with new ones without them standing out like a sore thumb. It is also difficult to add bits to an existing tap, you would probably have to change the whole thing. Guy