Dividing Bathroom for small 3rd bedroom

reximusprime

My SO and i are in disagreement over wether to divide our reasonably large family ( and only ) bathroom to make a 3rd small bedroom for our eldest of three children.

Would having a 3rd small box-room/bedroom and a smaller bathroom add value to our house over just redoing the bathroom ( which needs doing ) ?

any help appreciated- my mother also has opinions which is also troublesome!

Cakeguts

It would have to be a very big bathroom to be sensibly divided into a bedroom and a bathroom. Will both rooms have a window after the division?

DigForVictory

I've seen vast bathrooms, and box bedrooms, but for the idea to fly you really do need two windows.

Or plans to knock a hole in the wall and install one - which is definitely a Get Professional Advice job.

With three children, you may as well check out the likelihood of an extension, extra bedrooms & an extra bathroom/shower room/toilet as well. It is so rarely easy simple & cheap, so be prepared for starting with asking a pro for advice on plan, permission & possible pricing.

Then you have formal data on which to exclude ma in law from these discussions, unless she's bankrolling it. (It's OK to disagree with your OH but to contend with the female relatives as well is a bit much. If necessary, lie through your teeth & say the idea's been shelved, even as the JCB is about to start digging...)

need_an_answer

I'm a great one for adapting a property for your needs rather than focusing on what happens to the resale value however it depends how long you intend to stay in the property and if you were to look at selling in the future whether it could easily be reconfigured.

Unless you have really big rooms sometimes splitting a room doesn't make for either a good bathroom or a bedroom in terms of size.
You will always need more space than you think particularly in the bedroom so what in your minds eye might provide 2 decent rooms probably will end up as 2 cramped box rooms that just accommodate a shower in one and at best a single bed in the other.

Cakeguts makes a very valid point of there needing to be a window in at least the bedroom to class it as a bedroom going forward.

If the bathroom doesn't have a window in the new design you would need to look at extractor fans in order to minimise steam.

reximusprime

yes- we would have to replace the one big sash windows thats in the middle of the wall with two smaller ones-

hazyjo

Roughly what sizes would each room be after dividing? (Remember to allow for thickness of walls too!).

What size is the bathroom now?

I once had a house that had two good sized bedrooms and a huge bathroom. Some in the street had divided it into a single and a small bathroom. Do you know what others in your street have done? Is it possible to see any layouts on houses that have sold in the last year or so? If nobody has done it, it's prob because it ain't big enough! I'm guessing the bathroom was moved from downstairs at some stage into a bedroom? Victorian?

My current house has two large bedrooms, a tiny narrow box room, and a very large bathroom. tbh the box room is too small to be anything other than an occasional bedroom. We have a single bed in it and some nice hooks on the wall at the foot of the bed (a foot or so away) for people to hang stuff on, but it wouldn't be enough for a wardrobe or drawers. I certainly wouldn't be losing my lovely big spacious bathroom for a bedroom that size.

DigForVictory

reximusprime wrote: »

we would have to replace the one big sash windows thats in the middle of the wall with two smaller ones

Hate to sound too keen but that might require Planning let alone advice on structural wisdom etc. Plus genuine sash windows are a beautiful & endangered species - you may be in a heritage radius.

If you must be hung, be hung for a sheep not a lamb - use google maps & look at all the other houses around you & see if they've extended & in which directions.

(Am not in construction etc, have no vested interests but daughter of passionate house extender as he discovered daughters can monopolise bathrooms. So much easier to cope with an extension when the children are smaller & not on exam trajectories yet. [?])

shinytop

We did a similar thing but it was a huge and horrid (early 80s boudoir-styled pink shell-shaped suite with gold taps) en-suite rather than a family bathroom. We converted it to a small double bedroom with a tiny en-suite loo/shower with no window (in the tiny en-suite). It works quite well although larger people may struggle. Does it add value to our house? Probably not. But we didn't do it to make money; it gave us what we wanted at the time. I would not have done it to an only bathroom though.

Doozergirl

reximusprime wrote: »

yes- we would have to replace the one big sash windows thats in the middle of the wall with two smaller ones-

I don't have a strong opinion on dividing the room - if it works for you and the rooms aren't ridiculous then do what suits you. Increasing the number of bedrooms is more likely to add value than remove it, but we're a bit light on information.

However, you must be very careful with the exterior of the house. There's good opportunity to ruin the aesthetic of a house by mucking around with windows. Not only is proportion and symmetry important, the look of the house against the rest of the street is too. There's also the risk of a not very careful builder making a pigs ear of matching brickwork.