Small bathroom - ditch the bath?

As some of you will be aware, we recently purchased our first IP :)

The house is a three bedroom timber property with a small bathroom. The previous owners had intended on renovating the bathroom, and had purchased a claw foot bath, a nice pedestal vanity and a new dunny. All of these items are included in the sale.

The bathroom is quite small, and currently consists of a bath, toilet and vanity unit. It is in poor condition and really needs renovation.

I am thinking that a claw foot bath will look silly in such a small space, and will present problems in terms of allowing a shower.

I am considering ditching the bath completely, and replacing it with a shower unit, possibly with a small square type bath at the base of the unit (I have seen them, not sure what they are called).

Question is, for a three bedroom house, am I silly removing the bath? What do you think?
 
If this is a family home then it needs a bath. If there is no bath you will be limiting your tenant options. Kids need baths!! Could it work with a shower over the bath?
 
Depend were your IP is, up north there is less baths i have noticed, tho like Y-Man said, try the shower over bath is always a win-win situation
 
If this is a family home then it needs a bath. If there is no bath you will be limiting your tenant options. Kids need baths!! Could it work with a shower over the bath?

I can tell you from personal experience (as a 7 year old), those little square baths at the bottom of the shower are plenty big enough to jam in at least 2 kids. They don't need the luxury of a full-size, it'll just spoil them.
 
As a Mum, I want to know there is a useable bath in a property. I tend to dismiss properties that only have shower stalls. Swap the claw foot for something modern. Or, if the claw foot helps to set the period of the house, install a stainless hand held shower that will clip up on the wall. They can look great too.
 
Same Scenario & went with the shower over bath

I have just gone through the same decision. My bathroom is approximately 2.75 x 2.4 m in size which will also be inclusive of a small European laundry. I had thought of a large sized shower and getting rid of the shower over bath.

In the end, I would be restricting my options for a family with young children. Given its location, it may not have been a big issue, but the bath is a good size, with a glass fixed swing double bath screen. If I add two bathrooms, then the smaller one would have been OK with a shower only.
 
Some baths are specifically designed for showers overhead. The are flat floored at one end. Dropping it lower so you don't have difficulty getting is would be good too and it makes the area look visually larger. Clear glass screens are available too if you want to create a modern look.
 
For a house: keep the tub. Shower over bath with an old fashioned shower curtain rail going around it.

Cheers,

The Y-man

We have one of those shower over bath tubs...but the tub gets dirtier even after just couple of showers...I hate scrubbing tub every 2 / 3 days..and kids hate having a bath in a dirty tub...any ideas on keeping it relatively clean and reducing chores...

I am after hubby to put in a dunny and shower in the shed/spare room outside the house...we have all the plumbing / drain set up...just needs a few of walls and doors and a shower cubicle..anyone knows any quick DIY bathrooms / dunnies ? Also does the plumbing has to be done by a plumber (like electricals) or they allow DIYers too. They do not have to be the snazziest but decent enough to shower in...
 
Keep it clean without chemicals with an Enjo bathroom mit. I have just got one and it is good. I have never been one to use many chemicals anyway, but the Enjo mit does the job without anything.
 
Previous owners of the house i bought ditched the bath in favour of big shower. I must admit it was a very good decision, having a shower which can fit 2 ( or more) adults is a big plus :D
 
I had a shower over the bath. The bath was a modern one with glossy, curvateous finish. Shower was bi-fold glass door over bath.

Hated it, as showering, ie. spraying water, in a bath while standing up and bending about (eg. to reach the shampoo bottle) was dangerous, the bath base was slippery. Getting out afterwards was also dangerous when wet. Definitely not suitable for older people or anyone in a hurry. Had tried the grip mat, but that was next to useless.

One possible solution is to use shower over low height bath (max 40 cm) with flat and non-slip bottom as I have seen in some city apartments.

Another solution is to have a double shower (eg. 120 to 150 cm long) with wide opening door. Kids can have bath with plastic tubs. Older kids should be ok with showers.
 
Our thinking now is;

  • Rip out the old bathroom
  • Tile - The bathroom is so small that we are planning on all white tiles to enhance the sense of space.
  • Paint - same colour as the rest of the house, neutral.
Then;

  • We'll sell off the 'older period' claw foot bath and pedestal, vanity and tap sets.
  • We'll purchase a low cost 'normal' rectangle bath, a rounded corner glass pivot shower screen (for the shower over bath), a new vanity and tap sets (lowest cost possible while still looking good).
We are even considering doing this ourselves. We have a carpenter (mate), plumber (mate) and ourselves. Everything will be in the same place as it always was. Bath, Toilet and Vanity, so no need for any pipes to be shifted.

Has anyone ever done their own bathroom for the first time? How was it? Any experiences to share?

Tile the floor or polished boards in the bathroom?

Am I on the right track?
 
We have done plenty of bathrooms. We rip out the old bathroom ourselves. Hubby lays AC sheeting and we tile ourselves, hubby builds the bath "plinth" and plumber does the connections. Shower screen done by a company who specialises in it.

When a builder did our own PPOR he got a sealing company in who painted on a thick, very smelly layer over the floor and walls where the shower would be. It stank for a week, but supposedly waterproofs the room. We have never done this in a rental. Don't know if we had to do it at home because the whole job needed to be passed as part of a big reno.

Curious if anybody knows whether this sealing job is a necessity, or a choice? We have never done it in an IP, but our IPs don't have living space under the bathrooms. Maybe that is the difference. Any leaks simply would end up on the dirt or cement below (though we don't have any leaks :D).

We always tile the floor. However, we did a reno for my mother about five years ago and she had the boards polished, including the bathroom. Tenants since then are fastidious and no damage, but I reckon if they get tenants who don't get the water up and leave it lying on the floor, this is just a problem waiting to happen. If this does happen, we will have to possibly replace boards, sheet with AC sheet and tile it, so it is only our time and a little expense, but I wouldn't want polished boards in a bathroom in an IP.
 
Dave

Definitely tiles on your bathroom floor - unless the timber floor is sealed perfectly, you risk water damage (as Wylie says).


Wylie

We had a leak in a shower in an IP (Queenslander) - our pest man said to get it dried out and property sealed with waterproofing compound, or it would be an invitation to the local termites to move in and feast! I would think if you had timber houses, waterproofing of wet areas would be a necessity.

Cheers
LynnH
 
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Thanks LynnH. The first time we ever experienced this membrane type waterproofing was our own house. I have to admit when we are redoing IP bathrooms, we want to get in and out and not have to wait for this job to be done and cured. From memory, we had to wait a number of days for it to "cure" - maybe a week? - before the tiling could be done, but I could have that wrong. (Our bedroom was near the bathroom, and we just couldn't sleep in it. The smell was worse than floor sanding smell.)

I would probably be more interested in using this waterproofing method if we had living areas underneath the bathrooms, but as it is, we can easily see exactly what is happening to the floors by just looking up. In our own house, we can still do that, but one day we will build in the garage and make it living, so the membrane was worth doing.

The other thing I have always wondered about is the drain. We always just redo the bathroom and generally don't put a fall in the tiled floor. That is how these houses were built and, again, it is something a professional tiler would no doubt do, but not having to have an inspection has meant we just do what has always been there. Another thing we would have to do differently if we had living rooms underneath.

We do get our houses checked each year for termites, so should pick up anything that has "moved in".
 
We had the same dilemna and decided that with a 1.3m wide bathroom the bath with shower over had to go. We used elongated 600mm*20mm long white tiles to lengthen the room and a frameless screen for the shower to create a feeling of space.

I agree the 2 headed shower is a nice touch. So we went from a cramped bathroom to one that seems larger than it is. Some additional things we did, reswung the door, shorter length toilet and removed cupboards from the walls, added a skylight, straightened teh pitched ceiling and added downlights. We think it is now a nice room, much better than the bathroom servicing 9 uni students that is for sure.

As part of a talk on renovating tips I gave recently I had a slide with before and almost finished photos, I will try to attach.

Jane
 

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