Hi guys today I wanted to show you the first major project that we undertook when we first moved into our new home.
There are a few things that we still need to do, like buy a bathroom cabinet and sort the door out (its so old and I cant find a replacement so it might need restoring or dipping) and add some more wallart for over the bath, I am also considering buying some sort of wire wall basket type thing. But once I have added the final touches I will post a source list perhaps.
One of the reasons we chose the house was because of space, our previous home (yes yes I know we made it so so lovely) we loved, but one of the reasons we decided to sell up (apart from that we wanted to live closer to family and to a more lively a town, well more than stoke town anyway) was because we longed so much for a nice upstairs bathroom. Its been so long since I had a bathroom on the same level as the bedroom. When we saw the house the bathroom did not seem that bad, I could see potential with the rest of the house, and I honestly thought I could live with the set up we had for a good year. Here are the pictures in the advert before we came to see the house:
As you can see, when we saw the word en suite we were like 'oooh fancy' however, the more acurite disruption should have been: a narrow sliver of bathroom with a wobbly loo, freezing bathroom and shower were the curtain sticks to you - No I am not exaggerating! Basically, the previous owners had divided half of the bathroom into half an en suite, and half a cave like bathroom with no window, a over bath shower , sink and loo. both bathrooms had what only can be described as VILE VILE VILE chintzy cornice which we are slowly but surly wining the war on, the whole of the extension part of the house was covered in it, it hurts my eyes and offends me!
As you can see I had to do something - anything! to make it feel better. So I painted it, and it did look better:
,but still I woke up every day hating the house, Showered without feeling clean etc. So 4 weeks after moving in I posted an add on my builder, I wanted to see how much the quotes were to have it done in the new year, that was the plan honestly! I knew roughly what I wanted in my head, mark ever the sensible one agreed, (he trusts in my vision) I also knew what I wanted In the bathroom as 10 weeks before the move date I got this:
A brand new roll top bath still boxed, I won it on ebay for £100, the RRP is £850 so I was very happy with it, but it meant that we had to find a place to put it while we were packing up and waiting for the sale to go through. It ended up siting in our dining room and became a mini playpen/pallpool for the 2 most favorite people in the whole wide world (apart from mark) Layla and hayden.
Anyway, being new to renovations I expected the quotes to be alot more than they were, Mark and I talked and we decided to go for it, Financially it would be a stretch and every penny would count, but the bathroom fitter was a nice guy and he seemed to get my vision, I found that all of the others tried to curb my enthusiasm, tell me how I wanted my bathroom to look, but Sam had worked on quite alot of bathrooms and mainly high end ones, which was fab, He helped me plan the bathroom of my dreams and didn't pull that sucking in of air pinched look when I asked for the most difficult of things such as alcoves for my shampoo and loo. The project was to take 2 weeks, Wed have a loo, but would need to shower at mums and use the kitchen sink for teeth etc.
Anyway - Day one of the reno and this is how it looked once the wall was down and tiles down:
On day 2 - I get a call. The call was basically to come straight home! I got home to find some of the ceiling on the floor and a very very dusty bathroom fitter. Basically when removing the wall and ceiling, the ceiling had fallen in on him - to expose this:
Scary huh? I know, the last thing you want to see are mental joists sticking out of your wall. Immediately you begin to panic! Especially when you call a builder and he tells you that you need a new roof which will cost 70k I was almost sick! We didn't know what to do, nor did I know who to turn to for advice, Google provided no help, it either said we would be ok and this is normal, or that we needed a new roof. By mid week Sam agreed to give us a week to get some advice before we went any further. In that week we sort the advice from 4 structural engineers, 3 roofers and one construction manager. They all basically said similar things. That it looked a lot worse than it was. You see our cherished terrace is half a Victorian house (the house was a huge Victorian house split in half in the 50s to make 2 houses, and half an extension built in the 50s part of the charm of this house was the fact that it is topsy turvy.
The advice we had was that the concrete looked as if it had been chipped away to make the ceiling more flat and that the joists were snapping because the bath was directly underneath, We also had a test done to measure the moisture in the concrete and it was all fine. we also discovered that the fan in the bathroom wasn't even working as it was stuck behind a soil pipe. Long story short but we added a vapor sheet, replaced the wooden beams, plaster, and used a good kitchen and bathroom paint. We also decided to address the broken extractor situation and replace the soil pipe aswell.
Here is the ceiling once we had the LED spotlights put in:
Now we are a week into the build and we should have been putting tiles onto the walls, but instead we were just now boarding it out. We also didn't get started till mid week because Sam had asked us permission to go on another job while we were sorting the roof out.
But once he started Oh my did he start, It took a while due the boxing I insisted on.
Then it was down to tiles, we were still unsure weather to go floor to ceiling all the way around, in the end cost decided for us, we just didn't have £700 extra for the rest of the room. The tiles we chose were a grey porcelain tiles we managed to get from a tops tiles clearance store in Tunstall, the tiles were the first ones i saw, and after 9 tile shops I went back to my original choice. (sorry mark) we chose smoked Steele grey grout to go with it.
With it being porcelain Sam needed a better tile cutter than he had for the job, so he got his tiler friend to help, most of the tiling was done while we were in gran canaria for a week. When home It should have been done, However Victoria plumb for the second time had sent us faulty equipment and it took 5 days to get it all swapped, This is week 6.
Almost there!
By the end of week 6 it was finished yay.
I wanted the bathroom to feel bright and light and modern but still reflect that fact that most of the house is Victorian. I also wanted to add a touch of luxury by adding a waterfall tap, rain shower, and a square toilet. Id also pined loads of bathrooms with alcoves on my pinintrest wall so I wanted to try and incorporate it if i could.
Our lovely tiler guy also showed us a pic of a very posh bathroom hed done in a posh cheshire town, they had used beveled granite to finish off the alcoves.
We chose quarts! we had them cut and beveled at a kitchen counter shop in Winsford and it costed £120 which I felt added the glamour and luxury that the room needed aswell as showing off my favorite feature in the room. At some point we are going to add a huge custom made mirror here.
We set on priming, then painting it purple - only for my to bottle out at last second and go for gray, Then on a visit to b an q coming across this lovely shade of purple for £3, I had to do it!
So here you are guys, the finished article, 6 weeks of no home shower, holes in the floors, wall and ceiling and a few sleepless nights.
Anyway guys I hope you like our new bathroom, We are so happy with it. It was hard work, not physically but emotionally. We did spend a little more than we wanted but thanks to mark and his trusted spread sheet (I will never mock them again) we managed to not go way over cost, and by sourcing things from tile clearance shops, Ebay and sales we saved a fair bit aswell.
Thank you to everybody that helped with the bathroom, And for my mum who let us shower at hers for 6 whole weeks! And if you have also gotten to the end of this blog, Thank you aswell!
Love Hayley and Mark x
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