Downstairs bathroom is finished!

And here it is!

Phase 2 has lift off!

Right now there are two builders moving stuff from our garage into our dining room, prepping the spaces and organising the delivery of a skip. I can only compare the excitement to the feeling of anticipation one gets when pregnant: the unknown but ultimately thrilling possibility of something amazing is around the corner. But before then, will come a lot of mess, pain and money.

Last night I took some 'before' photos of the current spaces which I'll post here soon. It was difficult to get a good angle as the cloakroom is so small. Like, really really small. When we were imagining putting a shower in there we were originally going to steal back some space from either the outside storage cupboard, or from the under stairs storage. Neither of these options is happening now due to the cost.

The shower door will have to be made bespoke for the space so that it can fully open, that way when you're on the loo your knees won't be knocking against it.

At the weekend Rob and I went to Topps Tiles and chose the tiles which will end up on the walls and floor. I chose a 20cm square satin black tile for the wall and Rob chose the same tile in white for the floor. Me black, him white, it's kind of fitting. On reflection though, worrying about making the room look small when it IS small seemed silly - so we've ditched the white in favour of a dark grey. I'm guessing the size and colour will end up similar to the photo at top (via http://www.ffffound.com).

Phase 2 is imminent

Stardate: March 2012 - and I finally have some actual renovation to write about! This is in relation to the downstairs bathroom update and the implementation of a utility room. The builders came back with a quote, which was quite high, so we revised the plans to make it as simple as possible.

The quote was still too high but after some to-ing and fro-ing it looks like the building work, building materials and a separate water heating unit will cost £6,500 + VAT. We have to buy all the sanitary ware, tiles and extras (heated towel rail, laundry shelving etc) but it looks like the builders can start work next week.

I'm quite liking black tiles - not sure how they'll feel in a small wetroom, but after years of looking at white tiles I feel like a change.

In other news: there was a weird sound coming from our Samsung side-by-side fridge freezer. Turns out it was the fan hitting ice. It took less than 24 hours for the fan to grind to a halt and start overheating. Luckily (?) this happened while we were hosting a lunch at ours rather than say, the middle of the night or while we were away for the weekend. Rob quickly defrosted the fridge with our handheld steamer, and viola, the fridge is working fine again. The fridge is less than four years old and I had no idea it got icy - and we know a few people with the same fridge. Let this be a warning to ensure you defrost yours from time to time...

Tiles 'R' Us

Here's our youngest choosing some tiles at the weekend. I can appreciate her aesthetic sensibility, they were small, square, glass and black, all of which are fine attributes in a tile. This particular tile had glitter embedded in each one though, which hubby firmly objected to.

I don't know how long normal couples spend arguing over various finishes in their homes, but this seems to be an area where we actually operate in some kind of parallel universe and actually agree very quickly. We decided to start at the lo-end of the spectrum, Topps Tiles (which is where we got our plain square white tiles from last time) and move up to Reed Harris and Fired Earth next weekend. The theory being that we'd rule out the cheap options, find something perfect in the high end ranges and see if our architect could source them cheaply from his Iraqi tile manufacturer.

As it transpired, we found some tiles we were happy with at Topps Tiles - they're called rectangular mosaics, so they're like little bricks ie wide and short. Hubby suggested laying them upright (so the tiles would be thin and tall) but in a small room I think it best to lie them longways, to give the illusion of width. The options with tiles this shape is to lay them like bricks, ie the row above sits halfway over from the row below, but we decided that it'll look better to lie them in neat repeating rows (again helping the sense of spaciousness).

On the colours - I like gunmetal grey which is quite dark, and hubby likes a more oyster grey. We'll discuss this with the architect as he may have a view. We haven't found any floor tiles yet, but they'll depend on which colour the wall tiles are as black flooring might look too harsh with dark walls and dark grout. Also, must ensure the tiles are sealed properly this time round as dark colours and toothpaste is asking for trouble….

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...

Tasty bathroom

Image from wallpaper.com

As mentioned the new bathroom will be about 2/3rds the size of our current one, and we're addressing the lack of natural light with the addition of a Velux window (probably one that opens with a remote control).

This is a photo of a similarly sized bathroom which I really like. The small dark tiles look like they'd wear better than our current big, square, white ones - which weren't sealed properly so the grout always looks like it needs a good scrub. I'm a fan of natural wood too, and the plan is for the architect to design something bespoke to house the pipes and towels.

We had a meeting on Friday morning and discussed bathroom options, instead of a steel bath (which isn't very sensible as it doesn't hold heat) he advised us to go for a Villeroy and Boch Quaryl thing, which retails for about £500 + VAT. Ouch.

Another suggestion he had was to avoid visual clutter by filling the bath using the overflow and a bath filler. This means there'll be no taps in the way when you have a bath too, brilliant.

I really wanted a dual shower head option - one fixed to the ceiling, with another hand held for hosing down surfaces but apparently having a triple mixer (shower head, hand held shower, bath filler) plus a thermostat is a really expensive unit, so I've been talked into just having the hand held... good job I have this blog so I can keep a tally on the compromises!