shower ground floor adds value?

ReadingTim

What would you do with the extra space in your utility room? Would it make a material difference to that room?

A downstairs shower in a 3 bed house is probably a little OTT, and certainly won't be adding much value. But unless it's on its last legs / could do with replacing, it seems to me like you're removing something which could be quite useful to make more space in a room where people hardly spend any time. You'd fit in an extra cupboard, or a dishwasher, washing machine or other white good, but not much else.

Regardless of what you do, I don't think it'll effect the price of your house by anything. Therefore it's down to the cost of the job vs the potential benefit to you of doing it. Seems you're spending money to gain very little, at the cost of removing something that's useful.

Fuzzyness

when we bought our house, it had a downstairs shower in it with a toilet. three years later we knocked it out, moved the loo to a smaller space and now have a bigger living and kitchen area. personally i dont see the point of them but then our family is only three people so no real need for two showers in the house. even if there was i dont think id like to troop downstairs in the morning to shower. horses for courses.

ElsieMonkey

I'm not against a downstairs shower (providing it's not the main bathroom!) but it has to be positioned very well. I've seen shower rooms downstairs coming directly off kitchens, eating into kitchen space making the kitchen a weird L shape, being the room that opens out into the garden!

Not having a downstairs shower/taking it out won't devalue your property, personally I wouldn't particularly want one, BUT a badly placed downstairs shower could.

phoebe1989seb

Our last house had a downstairs shower. The house was in need of very major work when we purchased it and one of the few things a previous owner had done was to build a granny annex extension with kitchen (empty), bed-sitting room and bathroom with lovely pampas coloured suite. This was situated at the opposite end of the property to the kitchen.

Upstairs there were five bedrooms over two floors with only one tiny 'family' bathroom servicing the lot.

As part of the project to restore the 200 year old house we added a large kitchen extension plus utility/ground floor loo as well as converting the existing family bathroom into a spacious shower room and one of the bedrooms into a bathroom.

As our changes meant we already had three loos in 2500 sq ft house, we toyed with the idea of getting rid of the additional downstairs bathroom - we knocked the annex kitchen and bed-sitting room into a large family room with French Windows leading into the garden - but decided future owners may want that space to function as a bedroom for elderly relatives/teenager, in which case extra bathing facilities on the ground floor would be useful. We reconfigured the space and put in a shower.

As it happened we only used the (very nice!) shower room to wash our dogs ;)

Our buyers, though had three kids and thought having a ground floor shower room was perfect for mucky days in the rural garden

In our own case, whilst it didn't add value, it certainly made the house more appealing to the demographic of buyers we were looking to attract.

oystercatcher

When we had three teenagers and only one bathroom + a downstairs loo we seriously thought about adding a small shower room downstairs but it was too expensive.

A few years later the kids have gone and we don't have queues for the shower or bath anymore . We are both a bit disabled and are considering building a downstairs bath/shower room still in case we can't manage the stairs and need to sleep downstairs. Considering the cost we will most likely move to a bungalow instead though.

So a shower could be useful for some. As someone said what would you do with the extra space? If it made the difference between having a dishwasher and/or tumble dryer it might be worth it as I wouldn't buy a house where I couldn't fit in the appliances I am used to.

Edited to add...yes, as mentioned downstairs shower would also be wonderful for washing dogs, another reason I would like one. Have had one in a previous house by the way and we loved it, hence the wishful thinking.

Marvel1

IMO do what you want to do, as you are living there. I ripped out my bath tub and replaced it with just a shower cubicle as never have a bath, it was for me not value in future.