Hubby has taken the room back to its bones. The waterproofing is on the floor from 12 years ago and our tiler is calling later today to see it, and tell us whether he can go straight over it, or whether we have to rip up the sheeting over the boards so he can start afresh (fingers crossed he can go over it).
We ripped out the old cupboard, 1m wide 2.4m high of storage (at the doorway in one photo you can see this). We thought about keeping it and painting it gloss white, but the style of doors is "cottage" and doesn't suit the modern look we are going for. Also, when we built this cupboard we had eight drawers under and two doors above for sheets, towels, spare loo rolls etc. The drawers were fantastic with three little boys for socks, undies, swimmers, face washers, make-up, hairbrush etc, and kept the basin clear. I didn't have to sort out "whose undies are these - they all look the same". I just put them all in the drawer and each boy knew which were his - bliss!!! We had an old basin with no storage anyway, but did have a mirror cabinet pushed into the wall cavity, which we are repeating, but larger.
With only one son now using this bathroom with us, the drawers will go and we have bought the Pax 1m wide cupboard with white glass doors from Ikea $480 to slip into the space and give a modern, streamlined look. We thought about mirror doors to make the room look bigger, but that would reflect the toilet back into the hallway and dining room... ummmm no!
We thought about not replacing the cupboard. Sheets could go in another hall cupboard but the extra floorspace gained, was not worth losing so much storage. So many hard decisions and so many options of which way to configure the room. It has done my head in and even yesterday we were running through all the "what if we do this" options.
Due to having to fit a shower into a room only 3m x 2m we have ditched the wicker laundry basket and will use the glass door cupboard to house dirty laundry in removable nylon boxes that I can place a bag inside and just pick up and rotate the bags. It saves us the floorspace of a clothes basket.
Today we decide where our niches will go. We want to avoid a wall mounted shelf and will push a niche into one wall of the shower area and another in the wall above the bath beside the window with an LED water rated downlight in that one to give nice light for bathing and possibly leave on at night... hoping it might stop our son from turning on EVERY switch as he enters the room and having four heatlights, fan and 100W all burning, and then he leaves them all on once he leaves
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Bath coming out YEAY!!!
Naked room
Hubby today must move some studs and make room for the in-wall toilet cistern. We are pushing the cistern into the wall to gain a little extra floor space.
We bought a wall hung in-wall cistern and wall hung pan and flush panel, only to be told by the plumber that the steel beam under the house means we cannot use it. First plumber didn't mention it, so we will either keep it for another bathroom, or more likely sell it. We paid $800 for it in total (Grohe cistern and Argent pan so should get our money back - as it was a good price at the time).
We also bought an ebay basin that we will not use. It was a bit underwhelming when it arrived and we've gone bigger. That first basin was $180 so we will re-sell or keep it (easier to store that) and re-use it somewhere.
The bath I bought 15 months ago ended up being too big, but it was too good to leave. I paid $1000 for a stone bath (original price $5999) and the seller threw in a $400 toilet and a hinged bath screen. He had planned a new bathroom but sold his house instead and needed these gone.
I loved the bath, but when we got down to the nitty gritty, it was just too big for our room to work properly, so I sold it for $1000 and our son used the toilet and we'll hang onto the screen for the next bathroom in an IP.
Seems I have to buy two of anything before I get it right
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