Back to the drawing board

Procrastinators unite! We finally got the builders round this week to check out our plans with a view to getting a quote. A previous post referred to putting the bathroom into the existing garage, and creating a utility room in the current cloakroom.

The builders saw the waste pipe two feet off the ground and said that it was all possible (good) but that there would be cost implications (bad). If we wanted to run the new waste pipe from the shower and loo it requires a pipe of a certain size, and we'd have to join it up with the existing pipework which would mean finding it under the floor and checking it's suitability. This would cost anything up to £2,000 depending how much digging was required. Plan B was to put in totally new pipes and run them into the outside drainage system, but this requires permission from the council, which would take time and the cost for getting the permission is £500 before any digging gets underway.

Plan C is to stick with the configuration we've got and shoehorn a shower in there. It means we'll end up with something a little less spacious and probably more like a wet room. As I don't think anyone is fond of dealing with a shower-splashed loo, we'll need to put a screen in there but as the room is so narrow (less than a metre) it's going to be a bit of a challenge.

Pictured at top is a teeny basin, which in all likelihood is about the size of what we'll end up getting. Hopefully we can sort out a new layout/plan and get a quote before Christmas, so we can worry about the cost and mess over the festive season...

Visualising the new bathroom

OK it's not as bad as I thought. For some reason I'd convinced myself we'd been here for four years and I'd put up with the old bathrooms and very limited wardrobe space for a ridiculous length of time.

On closer inspection, it's coming up to three years. I had a three-year gap between kids as that was about the right amount of time to forget the horror of popping out a newborn. Renovating is similar. I'll be pretty chuffed it we can get the next part of the downstairs renovation done in the next few months, so it means we can gear up for the top floor project (eventually).

Rob made a 3D drawing of where stuff will go in our downstairs bathroom - it's not representative of the actual things that will end up there, but we wanted to show the builders the layout and spacing. It's a bit tricky to do that while staring into the current room as there are so many boxes, a washing machine, dryer and overspill from the kitchen cupboards. (Seriously - if we got hit by more riots/severe snow etc I wouldn't need to leave the house for weeks).

The builders are busy until mid-January at the earliest, but we're keen to get them round to do a quote soon so we know what we're in for.

If you want to see a truly inspirating before-and-after renovation project, go and 'like' Hotel Lautner on Facebook - it's now a drool-inducing mid-century eye-popping design fest, check out the early photos to see how it used to look. I'm a fan of John Lautner's iconic architecture - and the new owners of this hotel have done an amazing thing. Below is a photo of one of their renovated bathrooms, I hope there are similar tiles at Topps Tiles...