Tiles and bathroom fittings

We had a design meeting with the Anthony and Amy (our architect and his assistant) and now have a heck of a lot of things to find - ie: a list of the actual sanitary items we want to see in the bathroom, the tiles etc. We had a hasty visit to a local tile shop on the weekend but it didn't stock a single sample of anything we want in our home. It was all natural stone in various shades of brown with rough hewn finishes. Urgh.

Also managed a flying visit to a local branch of the bathstore.com (which always seems to have it's entire stock on sale... don't be panicked into thinking you need to buy immediately, we've been seeing the same "sale" promotion for more than five years now...) It was easy to find a wall hanging toilet, basin, taps and heated towel rail from the selection as we identified items similar to what we've got now. I'm liking the soft close toilet seat lid though (£40), that'll make a difference with the kids.

Anthony talked us out of the beige kitchen pointing out a white one will fit with the white walls/ceiling etc and look more streamlined. And an absolute genius idea he had was to make the wall up to the stair rail continue upwards so there's no need for a banister. This works on a couple of of levels - firstly we can now have carpet on the stairs, as you won't see the ground and middle floors when you arrive (I wasn't keen on having uncovered wood on the stairs, noisy and expensive) - apparently it can look odd to have a different stair covering to the floor, aesethetically. Also, it gives lots of wall space, ideal for hanging art/photos or just making the room feel more impactful.

The photo above shows another black folding door example, in a room a little narrower (I think) than ours. Our roof will also have glass in the extension bit (about 4m all up) so the light should be similar. Speaking of light, Anthony's found a Velux roof window that is nearly 1600mm wide, so it'll effectively be the entire width of our bathroom.

The next step is to put the project out to tender to a few builders, this is going to take 2-3 weeks. The party wall survey still has to be carried out. We've had the keys for nearly a month and nothing's due to start happening in there for probably another month...