My Own Home - Bathroom Plans and Progress

The plaster is now dry and as of today, the lights are fitted - now that we can see what we're doing in the evenings, we can put the coving up!  Last week I put together a project plan and, according to my plan (with the exception of the shower) the bathroom should be finished on 19th December - I think that may be a bit optimistic!





Original bathroom - in all its green glory!



When I first started planning the bathroom I wanted a surface mounted basin but that would have required a deeper countertop which would have caused problems with access to the bath plumbing.  All the plumbing was along the outside wall but because the width of the bath extends slightly beyond the window, there is no way of fixing a shower screen and getting a good seal where it sits on the bath.  We decided to turn the bath round so that the shower and taps are at the other end.  As with our ensuite bathroom, we will be installing an Aqualisa Quartz shower, which uses a system of delivering the water via the riser rail so we don't need to channel out the wall for the shower and only need to extend the plumbing for the bath taps.  We also did that in our ensuite bathroom and it wasn't too difficult - famous last words!  There will be a gap at the end of the bath so we'll have to build some boxing which will then be tiled.

Having decided that a surface mounted basin wouldn't work, the next best thing was a semi countertop basin, and something to place it on!  I really liked the Jasper Morrison range by Ideal Standard, below left:



Jasper Morrison furniture
and sanitaryware


However, these units are both 650mm wide and we just didn't have quite enough room for them!  After a long search, we finally settled on the 'MyRoom' range from Bathstore, although not the wall units shown in this image as we have a window above the basin.  It's all arrived, although we haven't checked it yet .........

'MyRoom Oak' from Bathstore

We will be having the Jasper Morrison bath, sanitaryware and taps and these are being delivered this week (except the basin which is currently out of stock - maybe we will be having a countertop basin after all, in the form of a washing up bowl on the countertop!)

 





Jasper Morrison bath, semi-countertop basin, back to wall WC and basin filler

Having ripped out the old bathroom, and finally decided on the furniture and sanitaryware, I was able to draw up the plans:



  

The next step was to choose the tiles and decide whether to fully tile the walls, as they had been previously, or part-tile one (or two) of the walls.  I decided to part-tile two of the walls so that I can change the colour if I want to at some stage in the future.  We then had the ceiling plastered and partially skimmed the two walls which will not be fully tiled, ready for painting (when I know what colour I'm going to use!)



It took forever to choose the tiles, but eventually I've settled on the Elements range from The Tile Depot - I really liked the grey tiles from Porcelanosa but they would have been over budget by a long way!

Floor tiles (will all be grey, not chequerboard effect)

The majority of the wall tiles will be this creamy colour tile
which has a subtle brush-stroked design

In the centre of the bath (or possibly, just off-centre)
there will be one vertical row of these darker grey tiles
 (without the border), with silver strips either side

The elevations and isometric drawing below give a better idea of how this will look:

 

That's it for now - the bathroom currently looks like this:

I still have one more coat to do on the ceiling but will do that once we've put the coving up, hence the lamps dangling!  By the time I post an update I may have decided on the wall colour and have given some thought to the window treatment - possibly!



Bathrooms

As part of my second project I had to do a bathroom and thought I would use the opportunity to go back over my research for that project whilst sourcing products for our family bathroom (although the budget for our bathroom is not open-ended as it was for Saint-Jean Cap Ferrat!)



Axo drawing of the Saint-Jean Cap Ferrat bathroom

For this bathroom I chose these surface mounted basins from Stonewood (£445).  Although they're dark grey granite, it looks like I forgot to render them in this drawing (whoops!). 

For the taps I chose the Rettangolo Cascata by Gessi (price on application).  The soap dish is £137!!  Both are available through Chartley, and probably through other suppliers.  However, now that I look at the design of the basin, I think that a round tap may work better than a square one; something like the Eclix, also by Gessi (£285).

Rettangolo Monobloc Basin Mixer

              

Rettangolo Freestanding Soap Dish

Eclix Monobloc Basin Mixer

I also used the Stonewood cast resin bath (£2,850) and tap tower (with built-in TV!) - a mere £1,450!



Rather than use stone for the top of the tap tower I used dark grey granite to match the dark grey granite basins. 
I chose a walnut finish for the wood.

For my project I designed bespoke wall hung cabinets in walnut (with dark grey granite tops) and tall cupboards either side of the window.  Beneath the window I designed built-in seating with storage underneath - it was a requirement of the client that the bathroom should have plenty of storage.

The loo was definitely Laufen but I can't remember which one, although I know I would have picked one that I could easily draw by hand (the bath caused me no end of problems) - this project was before we had been taught CAD!  It may have been this one in the Ilbagnoalessi Dot range:

The large walk-in shower was by Hueppe.  I can't find the exact one now unfortunately, but this is similar:

The shower itself was by Roca and I think it was in their Neos range, similar to (if not the same as) the one shown below which is the Neos IV (£1,835)

The radiator was called Kremlin by MHS (with optional towel rail).  This retails at £1,225 including the towel rail for the 1800mm tall radiator.

The tiles I finally chose for this project were Hemingway Scribble manufactured by BCT which I've just discovered have been discontinued.  I spent so long sourcing tiles and never really found what I was looking for!  In my mind I had something similar to the tiles below which I discovered in the best loos in Greece I have ever found!  If you have been to Greece, you will know that they are not renowned for their loos but these in Parga made me see them in a new light - so good in fact that I had to go back with my camera!

 

You may need to enlarge the picture on the right to see the detailing on the white tiles.

There are so many tiles on the market to choose from, but here are a few of my favourites ........

The tiles above and below are Porcelonasa (who also do bathrooms - and kitchens)

The tiles above and below are by Laura Ashley,  (although I don't think you can buy the tiles direct from Laura Ashley direct so you would need to buy them via a distributor, such as Homebase).

The tiles above are by Villeroy and Boch

Tiles can add a huge amount to the cost of a bathroom and we won't be having Porcelanosa or Villeroy and Boch tiles in our family bathroom!

Having breathed a sigh of relief and finally said goodbye to the last of our coloured bathroom suites, it seems that they could be set to make a comeback!  I saw in Homes & Gardens (December 2010) that Villeroy and Boch have introduced a purple basin in their Loop & Friends range (they may call it cassis but I haven't been able to find a picture of it, other than in Homes & Gardens magazine).

Villeroy and Boch Semi Surface Mounted Basin

If coloured bathrooms are your thing, Ambiance Bain do moulded resin basins and countertops.

Although we were not required to prepare a lighting plan, we were asked to consider lighting and the different types of lighting you would need in a bathroom.  For decorative lighting, I chose these LED uplighters which also contain Swarovski crystals.

My next post will be the progress of our family bathroom!   To maximise the space in this (very) small bathroom we will be installing fitted furniture so that we can hide all the pipework and give the impression of a bigger space. The plaster is now dry, I've painted the ceiling and the cabinets have arrived.....although, as yet no bath etc, and the basin is currently out of stock!  Completion by Christmas is not looking likely!

Please see the links for some of the major bathroom suppliers.

My Own Home

I love to look around other people's houses and thought that you might like a little look around mine!  Whilst waiting for the plaster to dry in our family bathroom (more on that in a future post), I've had a look back through the photo albums and found photos of the house as it was when we first moved in - in all its wallpapered glory!


We moved into our house in November 1999 (11 years ago yesterday as I write this!) and if anyone had said to me that 11 years on, we would still have deep rose pink fleur de lys carpet anywhere in the house I would have vehemently denied it!  However, the sad fact is that we still do - albeit it only on the stairs and landing.  We still have lots to do (including the stairs and landing - that carpet's not staying!) and now that I have a bit of spare time again, my plan is to complete what we set out to achieve 11 years ago!

First of all, some 'before' photos, which will bring back memories for friends and family reading this post.  These were taken in a pre-digital age and have been scanned so the quality is not great, which is probably no bad thing!

The previous owners were elderly and must have had some prior connection to the hotel / pub industry if the carpet is anything to go by!  We often see 'our' carpet on TV programmes and normally in a pub or B&B!  You needed vision to buy our house, to see beyond the wallpaper, which was different in every room - and was so awful I had to keep bits of it to remind myself of the progress we've made!

                                           

The hall with the living room off to the right and the kitchen at the end of the hall.

The wallpaper from the hall stairs and landing



Living room, complete with child, now a grown up 21 year old!

 

This is the wallpaper in close up from the living room - thankfully only on one wall but it was enough!

How about this for busy artex?!

We had 3 different styles of artex in our house - this was in the living room & dining room

The dining room, with the wallpaper below, right.

 

                                   

No wallpaper in here but those patterned carpet tiles more than compensated!  

   Downstairs cloakroom with a very 80's green suite!  This room also had the fleur de lys carpet, although at this stage I'd had a go with the stencil by the looks of things!

                                                              The master bedroom (actually in here I'm not sure what's worse, the wallpaper or all the cuddly toys on the bed!)    

Wallpaper from the master bedroom - more flowers!

En suite bathroom (this picture was taken when we were planning the new bathroom, hence the panel which we'd cut out to see if it would be feasible to conceal the cistern in a base unit)

The second bedroom, and a priority as that wallpaper (on all 4 walls) was not good for a 10 year old boy! 

Strangely no picture of the third bedroom

but this is the fourth bedroom (box room really)

The wallpaper from the fourth bedroom








And finally, a couple of before pictures of the family bathroom - I say 'before' but until a week ago, it was current - I will be posting the progress of the bathroom shortly!

We did have the fleur de lys carpet in here too, but carpet in bathrooms being one of my pet hates, that was soon replaced with vinyl tiles!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

So, what have we done so far?  Well, we've made some progress but everything we've done was before I'd completed my course (no time to even breathe while I was studying!)  and now that I've finished my course I realise there is still so much more we could do and need to do! 

I'm therefore thinking of these pics as 'interim' rather than finished, but still an improvement on the original which is not difficult!

So far in the hall we've put laminate flooring down to replace the carpet and added a dado rail, which I would now like to remove but I'm not sure that it will come off without bringing the wall down!  When we re-do the hall we'll also change the banisters to spindles and may replace the laminate with real wood - but by the time we get to it I expect I will have changed my mind again!

In the living room we've replaced with gas fire with an open fire (prompted by the loss of an oak tree from the back garden and the resulting mountain of wood to burn - I had wanted one for ages and this provided the perfect opportunity!)

I love accessories (cushions in particular!) and am frequently buying new additions and swapping cushions between the sofas.  I think as a reaction against so much pattern in the living room, this room seems very plain, but it's also very easy to live with!  Not planning to change this in the near future, although the cream carpet wasn't a practical choice!  Although not visible on the photos we re-hung the door from the hall so that it opened to the right instead of the left and is much better as it doesn't appear to cut the room in half when it's open.  In both rooms we had the ceilings plastered flat to get rid of the busy artex!

We also re-hung the door in here and the room feels bigger as a result.  Throughout the ground floor we replaced all the Flemish glazed doors with plain bevelled glass doors and it's made it feel much bigger.  I'm now thinking this room could do with a bit of colour and pattern and may replace the curtains at some point.

We didn't have the budget to replace the kitchen (and still don't!) but it definitely needed something!  We replaced the worktops, sink, tap and tiles - and the floor!  The two glazed cupboards were originally next to each other on the wall opposite the windows.  The original cupboards above the kettle were too short and I thought it would be better to move one of them over the other side of the kitchen and split the glazed cupboards and position them either side of the remaining shorter cupboard.  It took a bit of time but, after a coat of paint and with the installation of lights in the glazed cupboards and underneath all the wall cupboards, it's much improved!  

In the downstairs cloakroom we replaced the green suite with a white one, replaced the fleur de lys carpet with ceramic tiles - and I painted over my stencilling! 

This room is next on my list - after the family bathroom!  What you can't see are the horrible Formica wardrobe doors with plastic beading - nice!  We have had all the windows replaced and consequently the window frame is now white inside which is much better (makes all the rooms feel much lighter) but this room definitely needs bringing up to date a bit!

We started our en suite bathroom nearly 4 years ago and I'm ashamed to say it's still not finished!  It has moved on a bit since these photos were taken, but one of them shows the problem we had trying to fit the concealed cistern into a unit with the soil stack in the corner. 

We now have a different mirror as the original has stopped working which shows how long it's been in situ (it's illuminated from behind and the pull cord broke).  We have underfloor heating in here which apparently will be working when we do our bedroom (!) as it involves lifting floorboards to run the cables to a power supply so watch this  space!  

This room has changed again since this photo was taken (at 21 my son has outgrown the trucks and diggers floor cushion!), but it wasn't tidy enough to show on here!  However, it's still an improvement on the flowery wallpaper and  was fine for a 10 year old!

Another room to be re-done (I'd been at it with the stencils again when I did this room - it was 10 years ago!) - but still better than the state it was in when we moved in!  

If you're still with me, thank you for your patience!  That's it for now.  Still no pics of the third bedroom (which also needs doing) and the family bathroom currently looks like this:

Watch this space for its progress!