Two tiny ensuites - what to do?

libertyx

beckstrous wrote:

My partner and I recently bought our first house, a 2-bedroom terrace with two ensuites. The house is about 7 years old but both the bathrooms are quite dated and neglected and they are also both really small. We would like to knock them through into one bathroom, but my mum and also a friend of mine with a bit more experience in houses reckon that this could knock about 2 grand off the value of the house. One of the bathrooms has a bath, and the other has a shower, and they are both really small. Would it really devalue the house that much?

If so, has anyone got any pointers as to how we could make tiny bathrooms look a bit bigger? They feel a bit like cells at the moment, if you know what I mean.

Maybe if you ask the local estate agent wether this would devalue the property or not, they would have a better idea of what the other properties are like in the area. I would also tile horizontally with oblong tiles and the use of a big mirror like in some of the hotels would be a good feature and add brightness. I,ve moved and done up quite a few properties. Wishing you luck.

movingforward2010

would the new bathroom be accessed thro one of the bedrooms? this might put a buyer off. I would just do them both up, new bath, shower mirrors ect.

amyface

So, a year on, what did the op decide upon?

beckstrous

How odd that this should come up! We're actually in the middle of getting it done right now. We decided to keep things as they were in terms of the number of rooms, but to get nicer suites, use tiles to replace the carpet and mirrors and different lights to make it feel bigger.
It is starting to look nice but it isn't finished. The plumber was supposed to come at the weekend to finish off the first stage, but he didn't, and he said he will come this week. We started tiling ourselves but it was very hard and time-consuming and we are getting a pro to finish off for us. We did manage the floors and splashbacks and the tiler said our floors looked very good!
One disappointment is that one tile cracked when the toilet was screwed down in one of the bathrooms. I guess maybe we did not put enough adhesive on that tile. It was a bit soul destroying as we were so careful and it took absolutely ages. I'm not sure how easy it would be for the tiler to replace just that one tile, especially now that the loo is kind of on top of it.