This article shows how ukbathroomguru combined a WC & house bathroom to create a HUGE shower, overturning some Victorian traditions in the process.

victorian-couple

If you don’t look like this (above), why are you stuck with their bathroom designs?

Did you know that in a lot of UK houses there is a separate WC & bathroom due to the Victorians?

When water was first pumped into houses directly in the 19th century, people added sinks and taps to their existing washstands in their bedrooms and put the toilet into whatever closet in the hall they could find, hence the term “water closet” or WC.’

Later, bathing facilities were often added to a spare room near the WC to keep drainage simple.

This (coupled with the small size of UK houses and the rooms within) lead to a lot of UK houses having a separate toilet & bathroom (often at the top of the stairs).

You may have one yourself, as they are very common in semi detached properties.

However, did you know that you are not stuck with this 19th century invention?

Things can be changed.

You have the option of adapting your Victorian defined space and bringing it into the 20th century by knocking through the WC & bathroom into one big room, and using the old WC as a HUGE shower or even walk in wet room.

As well as having a huge shower (in addition to a bath, you can actually wash your hands after using the loo without going into a different room – good idea, right!

We’ve done loads of these and we love them as they have a massive ‘before & after’ type impact.

Excited, want one? OK here we go….

You will need a team of tradesmen:

  • Labourers: to rip out the old bathroom suite, tiles, flooring etc
  • Plasterer: to prepare & plaster the walls & ceiling as required
  • Painter: to paint the walls / ceiling
  • Joiner: to construct stud walls, fit door frames & hang new doors
  • Electrician: to re-jig the lighting to suit the new space, to add an extractor fan etc
  • Tiler: to prepare & tile the walls and/or the floor
  • Plumber: to plumb in the new suite

and in this case study below….

  • Roofer: to patch the flat roof where the old drainage pipe was removed.
  • Someone au fait with patios (to dig up & then relay the patio to suit the new drainage pipework)

So, unless you’ve got some pretty good DIY skills (and a lot of spare time) it looks like you’ve got a few phonecalls to make to source some tradesmen.

Yellow Pages used to be the go to resource, referrals are better and local pamphlets like ‘On Your Doorstep’ are good too. Nowadays the internet makes things handy too.

Don’t forget to check references, public liability insurance, online reviews, and wait in for a few people that won’t show up when you’ve waited in for them (don’t you just hate that!)

Your time is valuable, and your house deserves to be treated with respect.

If you want a job like this doing well, get in touch with a company that has done loads of similar jobs to this in the past, and preferably one that can show you their quality before you decide to employ them.

Speaking of which……..

Case study: Roundhay

As they used to say on Blue Peter, here’s one we made earlier…..

View into the bathroom from the old WC:

dated-bathroom-prior-to-knock-through

blown-render

reboarding-_-bonding-up

knocked-through-bathroom

ukbathroomguru

bauhaus-radiator

View into the old WC from the bathroom:

wc-adjoining-wall

different-ceiling-heights

different ceiling heights

1st-fix-pipework

porcelain-wall-tiling

shower-enclosure-tiling

old-wc-converted-to-shower

old-wc-as-shower

shower-with-recess

Outside work:

new-soil-pipe-connection

external-drainage-work

old-cast-iron-soil-pipe-to-replace

Before & afters:

opening-up-a-wc-into-a-shower
paul-before-after

Why our customer picked us & why you may value our service

  1. Free site survey to assess feasibility of plans
  2. Lots of online testimonials and case studies of similar jobs – so they knew we would do a good job
  3. Free itemised, written quotation & plans
  4. Project managed installation from start to finish

“The Bathroom Guru team did a fantastic job of completely renovating my bathroom in just over two weeks. This involved knocking through the previously separate toilet and bathroom, re-plastering, all plumbing work and full tiling of the whole bathroom. All of the work was done to a high standard and for a good price.

Prior to the work, Chris the Project Manager was able to guide me through the process of designing the layout of the new bathroom and selecting the most appropriate fittings. The Bathroom Guru website was very helpful to understanding the process, and the approach to quoting for the work was detailed and honest.

Everyone at Bathroom Guru were incredibly friendly to work with and I won’t hesitate to use them for future projects.”

Anything else?

Thanks for reading, here’s some other articles that you may be interested in if you’re considering this type of scheme:

Chris