Bathroom Renovations

One of the strangest things about this house when we bought it was the bathrooms: one was in the middle of the kitchen and the other was massive en-suite off the main bedroom. Needless to say, that wasn’t going to work. We knew we’d need a large main/family bathroom upstairs in addition to the en-suite whereas downstairs we’d just need a half-bath/WC/whatever you call it where you live.

The first big job we needed to do was to remove all the internal walls in the kitchen/bathroom/utility area so that we could re-work the space to be more useable. We found out the hard way that the wall between the kitchen and bathroom was at one point external so was load-bearing, meaning we needed to have a steel put in to take the weight. Luckily, since we have some beams in the living room, we were able to make the beam blend in.

All the walls down- the window on the left is in the WC, the middle window was covered, and the window on the right is over the kitchen sink. They all used to be in the bathroom.

Although an unexpected expense and time delay, it was absolutely necessary for us to make the kitchen and utility space we have now. The small half-bath is actually smaller than we planned because of a misunderstanding with the plumber that we didn’t catch in time but it’s functional. I’d love a cute powder room one day but, sadly, this wasn’t the time or place.

I have no words for this bathroom that was in the middle of the kitchen

The upstairs bathrooms are much more fun. There was an obvious space for the main/family bathroom but it would need to be fully plumbed and electrified as, when we bought the house, the space was a double-sided wardrobe that provided storage to two of the bedrooms. Prior to this, there was a large fire place and chimney that were removed by the family who lived here before us. Naïvely, we thought removing the wardrobe would be a quick job. The previous owners were carpenters and built boats so we knew we wanted to keep and re-use as much of the high-quality wood as we could but we hadn’t counted on everything being glued, screwed, nailed, and generally stuck together as intensely as possible. It took a few days to get everything out and, when we finally did, we needed to think about how to position everything.

Wardrobe in the main bedroom

Wardrobe in the second bedroom

It took forever to take the wardrobes down

With the wardrobes out, there was a lot of open space that needed to be figured out. In order to have a bathroom that wasn’t cramped, we borrowed a few inches from each bedroom and got started with building the stud walls, which was slightly complicated by the angled ceilings. The principles of building a stud wall is pretty straight forward but the execution can be anything but, particularly in an old house like this where there are basically no right angles. We could only board one side of the walls at a time so the plumber and electrician could do their work easily behind the walls so it did feel like one of those jobs that dragged on forever.

In addition to building the walls, we needed to get the plumbing sorted out in a way that mitigated the impact of the soil pipe. We ultimately decided to have it come through our bedroom and boxed in the depth of the pipe into a half-height wall. I’m petitioning to put beadboard on it to jazz it up a bit- watch this space.

The space of the main bathroom is a big rectangle, which meant we had good options for how to use the space. We played around with different ideas and decided a big soaking tub and tiled wall would be really nice as the first thing you see with the shower tucked behind the door. We decided on a modern-style free standing tub- the Mode Harrison. This tub is huge so makes for wonderful soaking but that makes it easy to slip around in if you’re not careful. Because the bathroom went from chimney to wardrobes before taking its final form as a bathroom, it doesn’t have any windows. This obviously isn’t ideal so we decided on bright down lights/recessed lighting to keep it light and put in a painting of the fields next to our old house to bring a sense of nature in.

The big bath

The existing en-suite was huge and much bigger than we needed so we decided to keep about 2/3 of it as a bathroom and use the remaining 1/3 as a walk-in closet. We had to remove the existing bathroom suite and tiles, which was another job that took ages because of the size of the bathroom and having to carry everything down the stairs.

Because we had such a big tub in the main bathroom, we decided to forego a tub in the en-suite and instead go for a big shower with both drencher and hand-held shower heads. I searched high and low for shower tiles with no luck so, feeling desperate, I went into Wickes with low expectations. I was shocked to find reasonably priced tiles that I actually liked, Calacatta marble effect tiles, so I scooped up every pack I could find and struggled with the unwieldy cart to the check out. We used these tiles in both bathrooms for a few reasons: this was the height of the first lockdown so everything was in short supply; I hadn’t seen anything else I liked; with everything else going on with the whole renovation, I didn’t have the bandwidth to think about two separate bathroom designs in that level of detail. The shower takes up most of one wall but leaves enough for the toilet to be tucked away in the corner. Opposite the shower is the double vanity, which makes co-toothbrushing much more convenient, and we were able to re-use a huge mirror that had been left in the house.

The finished en-suite

Storage in bathrooms is as important as any other room but buying units gets really expensive so we decided to get a little creative and make our own. As we took apart the wardrobes, we kept the drawers and shelves that were in there because they were such good quality (like Karen from Good Bones, I like keeping and re-using things in a house) and it turned out some were perfect for sink units. In the main bathroom, we built a timber frame for the shelf to slot into once the plumbing was done and, after some intense sanding and shoving, the shelf fit in. We topped it with some kitchen worktop which the sink was plumbed through.

In the en-suite, we similarly built a timber frame but this was a lot bigger so didn’t require the brute force to get the shelf in. Both bathrooms have big heated towel rails, so towels live there, which means the shelves we put in are free for all the other things that need to live in a bathroom.

The bathroom situation is now much improved- if nothing else, it at least makes sense now.

Have you re-done a bathroom? Thinking about doing one and have some questions? Let me know and follow me over at @thehardinghq!