Old bathroom for new
Published on 16 June 2009 in House, bathroom, house
A couple of months ago I was trying to work out exactly how long we’d lived at our house – can’t remember why but it probably was to do with filling in a form for a bank.
To get the information I did what anyone would do. I checked my blog. And whilst hunting I came across a rather throwaway comment – “the bathroom really needs a new bath”
.
That was five years ago. And now finally we have a new bath. A new bathroom in fact.
The old bathroom
It’s a huge improvement on the original bathroom. The décor in that was all right because at some point the previous owners had put new tiles in (although they just put them over the original tiles – and put in a rather dodgy cabinet and matching mirror) but the plastic toilet cistern was rotting and the flush handle was wonky and wouldn’t work properly. Oh and the bath had some strange marks that just wouldn’t come off.
But worst of all was the fact that there was zero storage meaning we ended up with tubs and boxes everywhere as you can see from the photos (but I should say that we didn’t keep a grey box on the toilet seat – that was just used for packing!
For the new bathroom everything got ripped out. The bath is the same dimensions as before, but is better designed so it’s actually wider. The shower is a proper one – the old one was just connected to the taps.
The sink now has a cabinet under it, and is further back in the wall. The original sink was built out so it was in line with the toilet, but now it’s set back in the wall which gives us more room in what is a rather small bathroom.
No more tatty shower curtain – we went for a four part folding screen instead (there’s not enough space for a full one.) Oh and a bigger bathroom cabinet. And less tiled areas giving more colour.
All in all it’s a huge improvement on what was there, even if the water pressure is a bit low for our new shower (and the old one for that matter…) Indeed the only problem is that now the kitchen is looking really shabby in comparison…
Now that’s all done, it’s time to start planning the Bathroom Launch Party. Well any excuse for a beer I think…
5 Comments
What a transformation. I took keep the big ugly bottle of mouthwash on top of the medicine cabinet. I think the purposely make them that big for that reason.
Did you do it yourself and if you don’t mind me asking roughly how much did it cost? (I have a similar sized bathroom you see…)
In total it was about £4,300 I think – about a third of which was labour costs. Would no doubt be slightly cheaper outside London. A lot of the furniture was in Bathstore’s sale which saved us a few pounds.
That was with lino on the floor and only partial tiling. Full wall tiling would cost a bit more, but not substantially from our estimates. We went with partial from a stylistic point of view! We probably also need a pump for the shower as our water pressure is a tad low, but we haven’t tackled that yet.
That’s pretty much similar to what I’ve been figuring. Our bathroom was redecorated not lone before we moved in (2006) but its a pretty poor job. It doesn’t ‘need’ modernising, but it could to with a bit of hardcore tidying. But they layout is a bit iffy and it too is tiles on tiles. I think I’m just going to replace the screen, shower piping and try and tidy up the grouting for now.
I’ve just redone my kitchen (well its *almost* finished). Its was pretty hard work and I’d think twice about doing it myself again. Its saved me a lot of money but taken me about 3 months of back breaking work. I guess its cost me in the region of £5k, but its a big kitchen and that includes appliances and all materials. I even stripped and retiled the walls, and used marble.
The three months of back breaking work is, to be honest, why I’d rather get someone in! A former colleague of mine, after doing his kitchen, asked the question of “what is the cost of your own time?” I got the gist of what he meant 🙂