Kitchen's Bathroom

This will be a slow burner... this isn't yet budgeted, and I don't yet know what I want.

But what I do want is to replace the bathroom pictured as:

1. Wood floor is terrible for a bathroom, would prefer underfloor heated and tiled.
   
2. Freestanding bath looks great, but there's no way to stand and shower and you can never clean behind the thing.
   
3. No-one needs a whole wall as a mirror, what were the prior owners thinking!
   
   

Requirements (as they exist at the moment):

1. A proper shower
   
2. A better toilet
   
3. A new floor
   
4. Better storage options
   
   

Nice to haves:

1. A bath still
   
2. Heated floor
   
3. Maybe the toilet is one of those Japanese things
   
4. Lighting overhaul
   
5. New window
   
   

For now, this thread is me working through the ideas until they're settled enough for me to execute on one of them. I prefer to spend a long time thinking, get the plan right, and then execute fast.

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Gist:

• Probably leave the bath/shower on the left.
  
• Probably will leave the toilet where it is.
  
• Probably will move the sink to where the radiator is.
  
• Probably will not have a radiator (never needed it even in the worst of Winter as the small room really only suffers from cold floor, cold toilet seat, and once a bath/shower is on the room is hot).
  
  

Currently thinking that I should research ways to have a full shower space to stand in whilst keeping a bath. Why? Baths improve property values, baths are occasionally nice... but a shower most days is preferred. A shower matters more than a bath to me, but if I can have both then great.

Note that the width behind the door cannot do a wide bath, but the width of window frame to wall can be wide. So I'm looking at a square in the far left corner... or a bath that starts narrow and gets wide enough to shower in.

Which leads me to L-shape baths like this: https://www.lettalondon.com/collections/shower-baths/products/corner-shower-bath-with-bath-screen-and-panel-right-handed-frontline

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Baths improve property values

Do they though? If someone really wants your house the presence of a bath or not doesn't matter.

I have been through this at my last house and my current one.

At my last house I installed an L-shaped bath like the pic above and we never used the bath.

In my current house I have replaced the bath with a large walk-in shower and it is a much better option in my opinion.

I didn't want to spend say 10 years climbing in and out of a bath to shower for the benefit of the person who buys my house next.

I didn't want to spend say 10 years climbing in and out of a bath to shower for the benefit of the person who buys my house next.

Yeah, I'm split on this.

I take baths once in a while... but is that enough to keep the bath?
My partners uses a bath as it's easier to shave legs... but she reckons that as long as a shower space is large and has a ledge/seat in it then you can shave in a shower... she also likes baths to relax and help sleep better, but accepts that it's not critical.

We don't really know if we'll miss having a bath.

On property, this is a 2-bed (though 1 bed is an office), and realistically the only people buying this for the 2nd bedroom would be doing so because they have a young child (it's a small room)... arguably they would want a bath.

I'm very split... if there's a really elegant solution then I'm here for it... if not, I'll be going full walk-in shower route.

I was impressed with the usability of this solution.

If you changed the orientation of the window to higher/longer then you could hang the toilet below that which would give you more wall space for storage or put the bath/shower across there so you would have (nice?) views when taking a bath

That looks like a posh version of our bathroom. We have a smaller bath like that with an electric shower at one end, shielded with a very similar looking clear screen. Have a window in a similar position too, although no plant. But we do have shelves at the non-shower end. It's worked for the last 13 years. Be careful with people assuming the clear screen is fixed and then swinging out like they're hanging onto a door in a hollywood action film car chase.

Nice work on that first photo.

L shaped baths are a bugger to clean.

Yeah but how did you take the first photo?

Nice work on that first photo

Oh, I forgot to say, I'm a vampire

L shaped baths are a bugger to clean

Yeah, this is putting me off the idea.

That's a very nice solution.

Maybe I actually need a bathroom designer.

Honestly in a space like that (bit awks), I'd say it would be money well spent

ufh would be a must for me - so nice to have warm tiles under foot

deep Japanese tub
techy Japanese toilet
stone Japanese floor
sorted

Starting threads is how one accidentally starts building work.

I asked my builder who he would use as a bathroom designer, he's recommended George at Revive Bathrooms in Cockfosters as being "not a designer by trade but produces exceptional designs" https://www.revivebathrooms.com/

So I think I'll pop up there at the weekend.

deep Japanese tub

the problem with this is the getting in and getting out... if you can't sink it into the floor it kinda sucks, no-one wants to be climbing in and out every day, the height of these things is the height of a kitchen counter.

Dull greige/grey renders of bathrooms on their website and no Instagram of stunning jobs they have done.
Designing bathrooms is not exactly difficult and there’s plenty of material out there to steal ideas or looks from.

I feel like we need an aeriel view of the bathroom.

Probably will not have a radiator

How will you dry towels? Over the banister? If I could design a bathroom I'd have massive towel radiators everywhere that come on all year round.

a few steps should sort that out - but maybe I am showing my love of lying in a bath here.

How will you dry towels?

Back of door towel rails are what we have (not in the pics as the pics were older ones I already had).

The room is well aired, and we tend to leave the door open, things dry pretty fast.

We never really used the radiator as the spaces between the bars couldn't take the towels easily and we never turned the thing on. Just preferred a door towel rail as it held the towels apart and there was better airflow.

A handful of m'esteemed colleagues made this thing recently. It might be useful: https://imagin3d.reece.com.au/

The parts are all 'Strayan, but I'm sure there will UKian equivalents.

… but from an eyeball, I reckon you might be able to move the bath to where the loo is, put the loo behind the door and then you might have enough space for a shower in the corner next to it.

Another option would be to make the whole space a wet room and keep the clawfoot bath. Wet rooms are a bit 🤮 though.

I FUCKING hate our wetroom, they suck arse!

Out of interest, for what reasons?

I've ruled out a wet room... requires more considerable engineering than this first floor Victorian flat can likely manage. If it goes wrong in any way (it will) then the damage to downstairs will be costly to me, and putting it right will be disproportionately costly.

I'll keep the room as simple as possible in terms of engineering to ensure that there's low risks and that any thing that goes wrong can be remediated quickly and cheaply.

I've only heard horror stories about wet rooms (except in Sweden where people seem to know how to build them well and everyone loves them).

Yeah, I'd never add a wet room unless I owned the rooms downstairs.

A conventional bathroom is tricky enough (we've had one leak from upstairs neighbour wreck our bathroom and one leak from our bathroom do damage to our downstairs neighbours bathroom).