Bathroom Remodel Idea - is this feasible?

wisdenfan

Hi All,

Hoping to tap into the collective wisdom of the forumites as a novice first time buyer. I've just exchanged contract and planning to move into my apartment at the end of May. This is a mid floor 1 bedroom apartment in purpose built block (7 other apartments in the building, spread over 4 floors). This building was constructed in 1937. The apartment has a bathroom with a bathtub and a wash basin. There is a separate small room that houses the toilet. In between the bathroom and the toilet, there is an empty airing cupboard, which used to house the old hot water tank (this was removed 3 years ago when the owners replaced it with a gas fired combi boiler and that boiler was installed in the kitchen). You can see the current lay out in the first floor plan below:



Given that there is a fair bit of dead space (along with the fact that my wife isn't thrilled about having a separate toilet), I was thinking of remodeling the bathroom. As part of my planned remodel, it would look like below floor plan:


To summarize, in order to achieve this remodel, I need to do the following:

1. Take down the walls and doors that form the existing toilet room and the airing cupboard (store in the first floorplan)
2. Extend the right most wall all the way down to the external wall
3. Re-locate the toilet, the wash basin and the bath tub

My question is, is this something doable? Or am I coming up completely insane plan? My plan is to get certified tradespeople to come and do the job, and I'm assuming that there will be a certain amount of cost, which I'm ok to spend. But as a proposed plan, does it even make sense?

By the way, the empty airing cupboard was being used the owners as storage space for usual household stuffs, but when I looked inside the cupboard, I saw some pipes lying in their (none of them seem to be in use). Please see the picture below:



 Do you think I can take out these pipes as part of my bathroom remodel plan?

Any suggestion on this will be highly appreciated.

Thank you all in advance!      

Slithery

What does your lease say about making alterations to the property?
Are any of the walls you plan to remove structural?

JJR45

I would say some of those pipes are in use if  the hot water tank was there. But should be able to get them moved.

If not leave the storage, knock the wall out from the toilet to the bathroom. Partition wall where the toilet door was.
You could then have a shower bath in almost a cubical where the toilet is. (If you can get a bath that wide, no stupid glass door or curtain.
Move the toilet and basins to where you planed.
That would most probably be easiest and cheapest.

wisdenfan

Thank you for your reply Slithery. My lease allows for internal alterations to be made in the property, as long as I don't impact any structural or external elements. As far as I can tell, none of the walls that I plan to remove are structural.  

rev229

Well I’d put the toilet in the bathroom on the wall it’s on now as I assume the soil pipe is there. Get  rid of the bath and have a good size shower. The room the loo is in I’d make into a utility for washing machine and tumble dryer as drying clothes in an apartment can be difficult.

JJR45

One issue maybe the run to the fowl pipe may not have much of an angle on it if it has to get to where the toilet is currently.

anselld

Where is the soil pipe?  Somewhere accessibe outside the two windows?

If so the rest should be doable, permission allowing.

Alter_ego

Where is the downpipe from the toilet?

JJR45

Other option is turn the bath 90 degrees where it is, partition wall where the door is. 
New door opening in the middle  of the right hand bathroom wall.

Move the sink onto the left hand wall.

Knock the toilet wall through, partition the door up and turn the toilet round so it is on the bottom wall.

That would be the cheapest) least work. To be honest keep the storage or increase it to level the wall.
Either way you will waste some space as your way you will have a huge bathroom. Storage is nice to have.

Jeepers_Creepers

wisdenfan said:

Hi Wiseden.

I think the replies above are on to something; your idea - tho' perfectly doable - will give you a 'luxury'-sized bathroom but at the expense of storage. It just doesn't seem to be a good use of space to me.

Also, taking walls down and putting new ones up will add greatly to the cost.

This is the only bathroom in the property? Ok, first Q - do you really prefer baths over showers? You have 10 minutes in the morn to freshen up, and you'd run a bath?! Nah... Especially not from a combi - must take 5 to 10 minutes just to fill the bath to ankle level?

I would seriously suggest considering a shower instead, and you can fit all this into the original bathroom (tho' all we have to go by are the scales of the items in there). What is the actual size of that bathroom?

I'm pretty sure what I would do is;

1) fit a nice-sized rectangular shower cubicle along that 'door' wall where the basin currently is (and 'bathroom' is written). Could you get a ~1m x 750mm shower in there? If so, that's a perfectly good size. Treat yourself - fit a dual shower with rainhead and separate hand set. Make it corner-entry (top-left corner).

2) Fit the toilet where the 'No 1' is drawn (missus!). I'd hope that this would mean it would be an easy and cheap thing to do - the 4" soil waste would be in roughly the same place, and that's the most awkward part to move.

3) Fit the basin wherever it fits best - either where the existing bath taps are, or under the window (provided it's easy to get past it). Make it something special - a fancy bowl atop a unit. Even twin bowls.

4) Build that continuous wall as you planned before to make that a really large cupboard - remove doors 3 and 4 - or keep 3 if you'd rather have a separate cupboard within a cupboard. Stuff your W/M and T/D (stacked) in there, as well as your hoover, and everything else - that's a really good cupboard and it should help to keep your flat tidy.

Okydoky25

I would put the bath along the back where the sink currently is and put the toilet and sink along the other side. 

Remove the toilet wall. Put a stud up between the store and outside wall and you could have a really big useful Storage space Utility room or walk in wardrobe type room.