The bathroom was originally split into 2 sections – sorry forgot to get a pic before I started knocking down walls. The toilet on one side of a wall and the bath + sink on the other. We have knocked the wall down to make one single room as the toilet downstairs has been completed. As there were 2 doors into the bathroom and we only need one…(I didn’t really fancy messing around trying to put a door from the shower onto the landing!) so we had a hole to block up. We first though we could brick it up but we couldn’t find and 3 inch wide bricks, only 4″ wide, well we could but only by the lorry load….we only needed 18 bricks! A wooden frame was constructed, slotted into place and then screwed in. Normally you would put some standard plaster board on each side of the wooden frame to create a stud wall but dad came back with 2 sheets of Aquaboard for the shower side of the stud wall. This is basically a harder mix of concrete that is completely waterproof and is designed for just this situation, standard plaster board will be going on the landing side of the new wall.
The original idea was to use a bathroom suit from my parents house in Devon as they have just had a new one put in but I decided to go for a different basin and we also decided to not put the bath in. We are going to put the toilet from my parents suit in the downstairs toilet and the new toilet that was going to go downstairs is now for the bathroom as its a little more modern.
The new basin is a simple round design, no overflow, no tap hole just a round bowl. (the image above is just an example I haven’t gone for those taps). Below is the cabinet I have chosen, it is a simple black 2 door unit that the bowl can sit on, the tap will be mounted to the back right of the unit. I have gone for a square design for a high rise mixer, you can see it in the final pics. The unit top doesn’t fit in 100% with the style of the room so I am going to look at replacing it with the same counter top as I am using in the utility room and kitchen when I get round to those. We had abit of a problem getting the unit, at first I didn’t see the price was without VAT and when the unit came it wasn’t put together correctly and the top was incorrectly cut, the quality wasn’t what I expected, so after some faffing around a new one was finally received, that’s another boring story for later.
UPDATE: it now seems the unit I was sent was a unit that had been returned previously as when I got my replacement unit there was more packaging and bits boxed where in the original delivery they weren’t.
Finally when I did get the replacement unit on the 3rd time they came the driver didn’t have a note to collect the old unit, so its sitting at my rents house all packaged up waiting to be collected – I will give it another month and then it looks like I have a spare unit (that needs a new top and some extra screws but anyway…) 
I have gone for a Cook & Lewis quadrant shower enclosure, as above. It came in at slightly more then allot of the standard quadrant showers that I found but the extra cost is in the quality. When looking around showrooms it seems that allot where not built right, well that’s what I though but when I went into B&Q of Farnborough all the showers on display are built correctly but things still don’t look or feel right. The problem was allot of them are actually quite bad quality, seals not tight together, fitting is bad and overall just low quality, poorly built shower encloses – I was quite surprised that there where no decent unit at the bottom end of the market, I expected to find some cheap units that where of a low spec but a releasable quality but no! However the Cook & Lewis one I looked at was really nice, yes it had pretty much the same design as the rest but seals where tight, parts where made better and the whole things seem to just fit really well and not feel plasticy like the others.
Another original idea was to get this MultiTile panelling, but after adding the costs up, delivery time and the high chance of me installing it wrong and a little over the top for what I needed. I decided to go for some big white tiles sourced from Wickes with dark grey walls. The tiles are 60cm long by 30cm high. I waited until Wickes had a sale on, £20 off when spending over £100 on tiles, I thought great! So I bought them, just looked on there website now and there’s 30% off, arrh! The bathroom isn’t that big so there is no point in trying to make it look bigger, yes the walls being grey will make it feel smaller but that’s OK, the lights will be placed in a way that they only light up the shower/toilet/basin or bath rather then trying to light the whole room, more of a column of light on an object.
3 down lights illuminate the room. I have gone for 3 iCage down lights which are rated for bathroom use at IP64. These cages will accept almost any bulb, there waterproof, very well made and In the future I will be using LED lights through the house so I need to get the right down lights that will take the larger LED bulbs now. LED bulbs are taller then normal a bulb meaning that if I put them in a standard spot light they would stick out by quite a way. The down lights come in white (which I got, but there is a slight blue tinge against a brilliant white ceilings), chrome and brass. Instead of having a light switch there will be a PIR timer switch, this is setup to only turn on when its needed, i.e. it wont turn on in the day.
The lights are set into the ceiling, the problem here is that I didn’t want to cut a hole in the double thick insulation above as having a hole in it defeats the object of insulation and secondly I didn’t want the insulation coming in contact with the the light. A fire hood goes over the light to stop this from happening, I have seen fire hoods before but they have been these small plastic things. The place where I got the iCage’s from (downlightsdirect) also had some fire-hoods that where advertising with the iCage as they where bigger then normal hoods. When the hoods arrived they suited the down-lights well as both items were made to a high standard and a better grade then normal retail stuff I think. The fire hood came as a pre-printed piece of galvanised steel, 2 bends against a 90′ angel and they slotted within the beam nicely.
The shower itself is a rectangular shape that comes out form the wall, It gives the affect that its raining on you rather then a power shower style but still has enough pressure behind it. The thermostatic valve and pipework are all hidden within the wall. This gives a nice clean look as I didn’t want the traditional style shower where the pipes go up the wall. We had abit of a problem fixing the shower in, first due to the shower I had chosen the pipework needed to be put through the wall, this wasn’t too much of an issue as if you remember the shower is actually in the old doorway so there is just a sheet of tiles, adhesive and plasterboard to go through and we can plumb everything in from the landing on the other side of the wall. I was unable to place the shower exactly where I wanted as unfortunately I had already positioned the light directly above (Doh!), so the shower is now slightly off centre but its OK, it doesn’t look too out of place. The second side of the problem was the pipework that comes out of the shower that goes to the thermostatic valve protruded out from the wall, I.e. the pipework came out by say 5 inches but the wall was only 3 inches deep. The workaround to this was to create a new stud wall just out from the exiting wall, as this would lead onto bedroom 2′s doorway it wouldn’t be too out of place and not like a random bulky bit in the centre of the wall. below is the work in progress, check back for the completed pics:
For the floor I have a vinyl non slip surface in place, its called Cushionfloor Futura, it comes in black and silver I think. Definitely is a good idea to search around as prices varied by upto £10 per square meter! We layed down some 5mm ply to even the floor up before laying the final floor skin so hopefully it will still be looking good for a while and not get lines in it from the floorboards below. I decided on vinyl over tiles over a wooden floor as this has now created a sealed waterproof area, the only way it would leak would be for the whole thing to be covered in water and it drips down the sides. Here is a pic of the floor I have chosen as you wont be able to see it properly in room pictures.
As for the walls I have gone for a somewhat dark grey in a matt Finnish, I think it looks great against the black floor and big bright white tiles. Its called Pewter and I got it from Wickes, it has a slightly blue touch to it. Checkout the final house update for the final pics
So to round things up, the bathroom has been completely stripped down. Shower, toilet, radiator, vanity unit and sink installed. As the bath was going and a shower was put in the pipework under the floor also changed. I have layed new pipework for the waste from both the shower and the sink, this is all neatly tucked under the floor and comes out at the same location on the external wall so it looks nice and neat, the external pipes are finished in black as, well, I don’t like white. The external walls haven’t been cleanup yet so i will sort out the whole where the old pipes came out once the inside is competed.
Here are some work in progress pics, again – check back for the completed job!
