Fitting a bath in a small bathroom?

greensalad

I'm currently saving up for a new bathroom suite. I desperately want to fit a bath tub in our family bathroom. It currently only has a shower cubicle. 

The upstairs of our house is a dormer conversion and so there is an access cupboard which slopes down to only about 2ft high at the far end. It's also where the boiler is stored. 



I've had a few plumbers round for other jobs and asked them to have a look over and they've all felt a bath tub (with shower over for guest use) is feasible. It would have to be small, but that doesn't bother me at all (I don't intend to use it as I haven't taken a bath in about 20 years), we are hoping to start a family in the next few years so a bath will be a must! Some plumbers have been round for other tasks and taken a quick look over the bathroom and feel it's feasible. 

Main issue is where to put the bath. Suggestion is to have it on the window wall, but can a bath be right next to a full window like that, with a shower in, without getting damaged? The only other spot to put it would block boiler access?

Any ideas appreciated! We are not against moving doors or walls to make it work, but we can't afford to relocate the boiler, and we can't grab any space from other rooms so it has to remain within this footprint.

FreeBear

You can get baths that are 1650mm long, so it is possible to site it under the window. If the reveal & sill are tiled and sealed properly around the window frame, having a shower over the bath shouldn't be a problem.. Or you can hang a shower curtain across the window. Getting a 1650mm bath in to that gap is going to be tight, so you will have to be absolutely sure of the measurements before ordering anything - Ideally, you want ~25mm of wriggle room to get the bath in, and that assumes the walls are truly square to each other.

Doozergirl

You can put it by a window, but it's not ideal.  Given that you can't afford to move the boiler, it may be the only option.  Definitely tile the window sill!
 

Presumably the ceiling is already low by the time you hit the wall where the boiler door is?  

What does the rest of the floor plan of your house look like?  

greensalad

Full floorplan (not fully fleshed out). The master bedroom has a bath with a bath tub but we're desperate to make that into an adult en suite/maybe wet room, and not have to rely on having the only shower in the main bathroom. So we're keen to get the main bathroom fitted with the bath/shower over for guests/children use.



Here are some pictures of the current bathroom for reference. 







One of the plumbers suggested a 1400mm bath rather than a 1650mm? Works fine for us, and we intend to be here long enough that I'm not too worried about resale of the house (understand a tiny bath might put some off, but we won't be using it). 

I did consider taking out the wall that divides the eaves section, and putting the boiler in a wall cupboard instead. Don't really know what that would solve though.

Bathroom door could move a tiny bit to the left, to align with the stairs, or it could move fully to the right corner of the room if needed.

benson1980

You can fit a 1650 bath in a 1650 wide space, with difficulty….you can just cut out a section of plasterboard to give you the extra few mm you need and then repair afterwards. I ended up cutting out an approx 200 by 700mm rectangular section to fit mine in. 

Personally I’d use the full width and damage a bit of plaster rather than going for under sized as then what do you do with the 25cm? 

Having said that, I’d plan more long term and spend to take the boiler out into a better location first (assuming there’s somewhere better downstairs) and put the bathroom on the back burner until funds allow. Not sure I’d want to shower right in front of a window, aside from logistical issues.

greensalad

There really isn't anywhere better down stairs IMO! Plus, we have just redecorated downstairs, so I don't really want to move it. The only place would be the kitchen and it's on the other side of the house. 

I'm not concerned really about showering in front of a window personally, as we have very little in the way of onlookers, (only semi-detached on one side and our back neighbours are a long way away) but I guess guests may feel differently.

I know someone else mentioned shortening the window to a smaller version, so the shower section would be against a wall. I wouldn't mind that, as it's already a very large window.

Doozergirl

I think a 1400 bath is a bit of an own goal in that they're fairly pointless.   It won't
be comfortable.  

The window sill is low so it's going to get battered by  water - the higher it sits, the less likely it is to be affected, so there's an option of a new, smaller and higher window. The current window is also a bit of an issue for placing the toilet, as it sits higher.  

Oh, and it looks like you could really do with some additional insulation there when you're doing this.  The wall is incredibly narrow.  

I think the solution for space might actually lie in turning the stairs, which may well buy you a bigger room there.  If the stairs came back upon themselves in a 180 degree turn and you introduced kite winders, it looks like you might buy enough space for the new bathroom wall to meet the width of bed 2.  

The drawing isn't to scale though, is it?  

greensalad

The room sizes in the drawings are correct but I didn't perfectly measure out the stair width to be honest! This was just me throwing something together myself to assist with projects.

Definitely interesting what you say about insulation. We only moved in in March, and the radiators in those rooms didn't work so we froze, but we assumed that was just the rads being broken. I'm definitely OK with changing out the window to something smaller and higher, I'm guessing it then being situated at the "drier" end of the bath from the shower would mean less damage, and also having it removed would mean a proper deep sill with space to properly tile and seal it too, rather than the wooden one we currently have?

For bath I guess would just assess the space and buy the biggest bath that will fit (I won't be DIYing it anyway so we can work that out with the plumber).

What would you suggest for layout of toilet and sink? My thought was something like this, the dream would be a wide vanity (whilst still making access to the boiler cupboard not too much of a nightmare):

Doozergirl

Depending on the distance to stairs, you could just move out the wall (solely on the proposed bath side of the door) into the hall by 10cm or so.   

You don't move the door itself, you'd have a small reveal coming back in to the frame, but it would give you a proper 1750mm bath. I have done it in the past.  

Doozergirl

Found the rightmove floorplan.  See the bath wall sticks out slightly, that was me.  

greensalad

That would definitely be fine. We've just had the walls upstairs moved around and the same builder would be doing the bathroom (plus subcontracting out plumbing) so been there done that! Thanks for the idea.