A dilemma - bath v shower v bedrooms!

nwc389

I live in a cul de sac where almost every one of the 30 odd semi detatched houses have been extended to add either an additional bedroom or en suite and I have noticed that the houses that sell faster and seem to hold a better price are those that have added the en suite .
If you might be looking to move on then you need to look at who would be looking buy a 3-4 bedroom house (families ) and what would be important to them , as a mother of 2 lads I can tell you a bath was a necessity and now they are older the en suite is too !!!

katejo

jimmy_81 wrote: »

Ooops, meant to reply to this too - even with our proposed option 3 it wouldn't be a "big" bathroom! Think 7' square. The existing one really is absurdly small - imagine stretching one arm out full, your opposite shoulder would be nearly touching the other side. It's pratically microscopic! :rotfl:

Thanks also for the reply...

I have just done the arm out test in my small bathroom. Did you mean the width of the room or also the length? Mine is narrow but has a full length bath in it.

jimmy_81

katejo wrote: »

I have just done the arm out test in my small bathroom. Did you mean the width of the room or also the length? Mine is narrow but has a full length bath in it.

It's 2400mm (7'10") by 1150mm (3'9") with 1500mm (4'11") along from the door, which is at the end, on one of the long sides. The current bath is across the width of the room - i.e. only 1150mm long!

You could fit in a 1500mm long bath along the same wall as the door, but there'd be no room to then fit in a basin & toilet - the width isn't sufficient for a toilet next to the head of the bath.

Unfortunately it's either a tiny sized bath or none at all, if we stick with that room...

Thanks again for the reply!

katejo

jimmy_81 wrote: »

It's 2400mm (7'10") by 1150mm (3'9") with 1500mm (4'11") along from the door, which is at the end, on one of the long sides. The current bath is across the width of the room - i.e. only 1150mm long!

You could fit in a 1500mm long bath along the same wall as the door, but there'd be no room to then fit in a basin & toilet - the width isn't sufficient for a toilet next to the head of the bath.

Unfortunately it's either a tiny sized bath or none at all, if we stick with that room...

Thanks again for the reply!

I have just checked the length of my bathroom. The width is only 4' but the length is 11'
My house originally had a downstairs bathroom but previous owners moved it upstairs and so partially lost the 3rd bedroom. There is still a room but it is only big enough for my computer desk.

keystone

jimmy_81 wrote: »

Fair point. However... The house needs quite a bit of improvement anyway - our view is that for prospective buyers in 3-5 years we'll be trying to sell as a "ready to move in" house rather than as a project, which it certainly is at the moment! So we don't want to get the choice of bathroom wrong - and especially not spend money on a new bathroom that won't add value.

Actually thats my point. Future saleability isn't a consideration as you want to change it anyway to suit your needs. Also you have to live in it so your choice must be the first priority.

Nor should you worry about what other people might think when you might come to sell. Its too far in the future to worry about nd if they don't l;ike your bathroom they can always change it. After all thats what you are doing.

Cheers

lostinrates

With reference to tiny bathrooms, do you know you can get loos where the basin is almost in the cistern of the loo, just to the side of them? They are modern looking, and the actual purpose is water saving, but they are compact.

It also depends how much you want to spend. At one point in our current bathroom returb we were considering getting fibreglass and having a bath made to exact measurements, on our bathroom's case it didn't seem worth it because we could get a standard bath in (we wanted a wider one but couldn't go longer to get the luxurious width we wanted).


If one of your other rooms is big enough for a small en suite with a bath you could keep this bathroom as a really nice shower room, with a bigger than standard shower to make it feel a bit more 'special', It might not be ideal when children are very little, but in some places little kids do shower, and when they are littlies it might not be such an inconvenience to have them in your en suite?

I wouldn't want a house without a bath (personally I'd be prepared to put one in) but I would consider a house where the main bathing option was a shower, especially with water conservation being an increasing issue and water metres an increasing factor, three or four bedrooms could be a lot of people getting clean and water usage.

jimmy_81

keystone wrote: »

Actually thats my point. Future saleability isn't a consideration as you want to change it anyway to suit your needs. Also you have to live in it so your choice must be the first priority.

Nor should you worry about what other people might think when you might come to sell. Its too far in the future to worry about nd if they don't l;ike your bathroom they can always change it. After all thats what you are doing.

Thanks Keystone, I hadn't quite got your initial point I don't think! Do agree, I think we will be there a while so probably is better to do what's best for us.

lostinrates wrote: »

With reference to tiny bathrooms, do you know you can get loos where the basin is almost in the cistern of the loo, just to the side of them? They are modern looking, and the actual purpose is water saving, but they are compact.

<....>

I wouldn't want a house without a bath (personally I'd be prepared to put one in) but I would consider a house where the main bathing option was a shower, especially with water conservation being an increasing issue and water metres an increasing factor, three or four bedrooms could be a lot of people getting clean and water usage.

We have seen the small toilets yes - even with one though it would be very tight & wouldn't help with getting a bath in... I can't emphasise enough how ridiculous the space we've got to work with is... :rotfl:

I don't think there's any way to create an ensuite from an existing room with a bath - there's just not the space.

I think we're definitely coming around to moving the bathroom to the front room - that would give us a sensible, if still small bathroom and I reckon we can live with one lesser bedroom for our needs. Will continue to think about it though!

Thanks very much to everyone for your replies, that's much appreciated. :T