Complete Makeover of A Small Bathroom

Transforming a dark and dirty bathroom into a bright and modern family shower room

The bathroom before

This room was particularly gross.  It was extremely dirty and smelt disgusting!  The first job that we did as soon as we moved in was to rip up the old pee soaked carpet from the floor.  Then we scrubbed the toilet, sink and bath.  We had to live with this bathroom for a few months so it needed to be clean.  The room is fairly small for the size of the house and the sanitary ware was very old and dated.  The bath was an old cast iron one which would have been nice to keep if it hadn't of been so damaged.  The toilet waste pipe was only loosely fitted into a very old, large cast iron downpipe.  The sink was also cracked and had a lot of limescale damage.  The only solution was to rip everything out and start again with a whole new bathroom.

Removing the old cast iron soil stack

We had to get our plumber to change the soil stack, even though it would have been a nice feature to keep the original, it just wasn't viable.  The original soil stack connection, that was in the bathroom, was huge and too large for modern toilets.  The plumber chose to cut away the soil stack in pieces for ease of removal and he replaced it with a modern plastic one.

Stripping the bathroom for a blank canvas

Our plumber disconnected and removed the toilet, sink and bath.  The bath was extremely heavy and the original plan he had was to carry it downstairs on his back (like a turtle).  He soon changed his mind when he nearly fell over trying to lift it by himself!  It took two strong men to safely carry it downstairs in the end.  Once the sanitary ware was removed and all the old pipework we were able to strip out the room.  We had to remove the wood cladding from one wall and the dado rails (more wood for the log burner!).  Then we bashed off all the old tiles which, thankfully, came off fairly easily. There was also 2 layers of old wallpaper to remove which was quite a messy job. There was quite a bit of damage to the walls from removing the wallpaper, tiles and cladding so we decided we would fully tile the new room to save getting a plasterer in.

Painting a tongue and groove wood clad ceiling

The ceiling was lined with tongue and groove wood.  As I love the look of painted wood I decided it would be cheaper to paint the ceiling to give it a fresh and brighter look.  This ceiling is also the only acces to the attic so the hatch door needed to remain.  After filling and caulking in any ugly gaps, we painted on two coats of  white undercoat and two coats of satin wood.  This gave it a lovely white sheen which wasn't too shiny or reflective.  

Carpentry

We had to have the door changed to open from left to right so that when you open the door you get a full view of the room instead of obscuring the bath.  We bought a new door and handle and our carpenter replaced it and changed the opening.

Electrics

As the door had been changed it then opened and blocked the pull cord light switch so we decided to have the switch diverted to just outside the room.  There was also a very old extractor fan which we had changed for a modern one.  We had the light fitment changed to a pretty LED chandelier type to add a bit of bling to the room.

new bathroom chandelier

Squeezing a shower into a small bathroom

This bathroom just wasn't large enough to fit a shower cubicle as well as a bath so we chose to have the shower inside the bath.  The bath we chose was a P shape with a glass panel fitted.  This allowed more space in the room for a large vanity sink unit to store the family's toiletries.  

Originally the hot water feed to the house came from a header tank in the attic which fed a huge immersion heater in the landing cupboard.  As we had to replace the old heating boiler anyway, we chose to have a combination boiler fitted outside.  This mean't that the huge tank on the landing and the header tank in the attic could all be removed.  As a result of converting to a combi boiler we did lose a lot of water pressure and subsequently found out that the cold water feed to the whole house was running through a 15mm copper pipe under the whole front garden.  Obviously the water pressure was far too low and as a result we had to have the whole front garden dug up and all the water pipes replaced with modern 22mm.  A huge job that I will tell you about another time!  Once all the new water feed was replaced together with the combi boiler and all the new pipework inside the house, we were able to continue with the bathroom makeover.

As we now had a new combi boiler, and enough water pressure coming to upstairs, we were able to have a mains powered shower instead of an electric one.  I chose a chrome shower with a large square rainshower head and a detatchable hand shower for rinsing the bath out.  For the bath taps I went for the waterfall mixer tap in a square design to tie in with the square look of everything else going in the room.

Large vanity unit for storage

I chose this vanity unit because it has 2 drawers and 3 cupboards so plenty of storage for the family's toiletries and bathroom cleaning products etc.  The top of the vanity is a huge square edged ceramic sink and I bought a single square waterfall mixer tap to match the bath tap.  

beautiful square edged vanity sink unit

The square toilet

To tie in with the square edged theme I chose a square shaped toilet with a soft close seat (to stop that grating sound of the children slamming the toilet seat down!)  This toilet was quite cheap from an ebay shop which our plumber said was a bit tricky to fit so in hindsight maybe I should have shopped around some more and got one of a bit better quality!

Tiling the whole bathroom

As I mentioned before, the walls were in quite a state after removing all the old tiles, dado rail and wooden cladding so we decided to fully tile the room.  We chose plain white gloss tiles with a mirrored mosaic border just to give the room some bling.  The floor tiles are a very light grey wood effect.  Around the mosaic border we had a chrome bar just to add more shine and tie the walls in with all the chrome accessories.

Finishing touches

For the radiator we chose a large chrome towel rail which has flat square slats to tie in with the square theme.  We put a bevelled mirror above the vanity sink and added just a few shiny ornaments to the window sill.

The finished bathroom

We are very pleased with the results (although it does need a lot of polishing to keep everything shiny!)  

Bathroom before bling makeover 

Bathroom after bling makeover 

If you are interested please take a look at our home before we started work.


Please have a look at our lounge transformation