Combining A Toilet & Bathroom Into One

We install bathrooms from start to finish with all the bits in between taken care of.

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Before work started these two rooms were in need of renovation and the customer had made a start stripping the existing wall tiles.

We then took over to complete the renovation from an agreed start date.

The work took under 2 weeks to complete and involved the application of many trades to produce a large, single bathroom.

With regards to the structural element of the work, the wall between the toilet & bathroom is often non-load bearing so often not a major issue to remove (though never remove a wall without necessary permissions and checks 1st!)

As the suite items (bath, toilet & basin) were to be fitted in the same places after the structural work was done, there was no major issue with plumbing or drainage (see plans above).

The existing drainage can often be the biggest restricting factor when shifting about bathroom suite items.

A new shower could be added because:

• the necessary space was available for a standard sized shower tray & enclosure (by reducing the size of the bath slightly)
• the hot & cold feeds could be chased into the external walls to ‘feed’ the new shower.
• the drainage ‘problem’ could be easily solved with the use of a riser kit and running the waste pipe behind the bath.

Work done
The two rooms were knocked into one by removing the wall between the toilet & the bathroom.

A new doorway was built. It was angled to avoid another doorway into a bedroom and to open up the room a bit. The existing door was re-used and decorated to ensure a match with the other doors off the 1st floor landing.

After the doorway was built, the walls were boarded and prepared for plastering.

The ceiling and all the walls were skimmed prior to decoration.

PS The tiled areas were left unskimmed for the reasons I outline in this article.

Unfortunately all the walls were found to be blown and the entire room needed reboarding prior to plastering / tiling.

However, this ensured that all the walls would be sound, flat & level and would last a long time.

Tiling over tiles or onto blown render is a recipe for disaster as the weight of the new tiles can pull the render from the bricks behind.

Provisions were made for fitting the new vanity unit and toilet (ie running of hot & cold pipework and also waste pipework.

Siting the suite items in the same location made this job straight forward, though some old lead piping was replaced as part of this work.

A close coupled toilet with a soft close seat was combined with a matching floor mounted vanity unit & basin that would provide storage space for bathroom items.

A mirrored cabinet was fitted above the basin and a small tiled splashback was added.

Window cills and skirting boards were also added prior to being painted.

Here you can see that the basin waste to the right of the vanity unit has been sensitively boxed in to hide it.

A shorter bath was fitted to accommodate the position of the new shower enclosure at its base.

In the picture above you can also see that the floor has been covered with hardboard prior to the fitting of a vinyl floor.

A vinyl wrapped 18mm thick solid bath panel was fitted to ensure a long lasting installation that would not crack when kicked, but would be removeable if necessary for servicing.

The old cylinder cupboard at the bottom of the bath was now redundant after the installation of a new combi boiler had meant that a cylinder was no longer required and had been subsequently removed.

Once the old cupboard was removed and the walls were boarded, 1st fix plumbing was carried out which involved fitting the shower tray and connecting up the waste as well as running the hot and cold supplies to the intended position of the shower valve.

The wet areas around the bath & shower were then tanked prior to tiling to ensure a long lasting tile installation.

Large format white ceramic tiles arranged in brick pattern were combined with a light grey grout & colour co-ordinated silicone to produce a light and airy result.

A two headed thermostatic mixer shower fitted on the external wall with the use of a bar mixer fitting kit.

A large chrome towel radiator was fitted between the shower and the door by picking up pipework under the floor in an adjacent bedroom (as there was no radiator in the bathroom before.)

Spotlights were also added and lighting controls moved around to suit the new room layout.

To deal with bathroom humidity, all the walls were painted in an anti-mould bathroom paint and an extractor fan was added.

If you have any questions about this article or any others, please feel free to contact me or fill in the red ‘request a free site survey’ box and I’ll call you back.

Many thanks for reading

Chris