Makeover - Bathroom Transformation

August 25, 2014


Welcome to the Makeover Monday series. After living in London for a couple of years, we decided to move back out to a village in Hertfordshire where we both grew up and where all of our family and friends are based. London was fun for a while but we craved more space, a garden and fresh air. It was also a bonus that the further outside of London you go the more you get for your money. We got a three bedroom house with a garden in our favourite village for less than the price of our one bedroom teeny tiny Maida Vale flat. We were thrilled to secure a victorian terrace after a scary time of submitting a sealed bid the day before we were going on holiday for two weeks. But in October 2012 we got the keys!! The house needed a fair bit of work. It was all perfectly habitable but we set about it as our project and loved gathering inspiration from Pinterest and magazines and then finding bits of furniture or our bath on ebay, driving half way around the country to pick up our bargain finds and doing them up for our new home. Ben did 90% of the work on the house, an incredible transformation. We got featured in Ideal Home magazine this June, which I will post about soon. But first up is the bathroom transformation -





Before Photos:

 {taken on a second viewing when the previous owners were still living there}


{Lovely shower...}









During Photos:
First up, Ben started to strip everything out of the bathroom. We literally got rid of everything with multiple trips to the dump. Then we started painting the walls. We used a Little Green Paint Co. colour scheme called Rolling Fog which had three different shades to tone together. One for the bath, wooden panelling and the wall above. 


We decided to change the whole layout of the bathroom and make more use of the large room rather than cramming everything into the corner as they had previously done. We wanted to put a bath under the window - I love roll top baths {hence the name of this blog} and wanted to add in some Victorian style features to go with the style and age of the house. We sourced a Heritage cast iron roll top bath on eBay in the Cotswolds that we borrowed a van one day to go and pick up {and made a day of it at the same time!}. She also had a classic towel rail and let us have it for only £20. The bath was red when we got it but I painted the shell and feet. Ben, my Dad and his brother nearly killed themselves trying to lift it up our stairs it was so heavy!!

{bath after being painted, it used to be bright red}
Ben laid oak flooring {with a good waterproof varnish on top}, added in the panelling and built a new shower cubicle tiling it with Topps Tile's metro tiles. We kept the toilet on the same wall but moved the sink. The toilet, sinks, taps, cistern and shower unit were all new from eBay shops. It's worth looking on there as you can get some great quality products for a fraction of a retailer's price. Next to the shower Ben adapted an airing cupboard for storage and to hide the shower pipes.




We added in waterproof spot lights on the ceiling instead of the previous single light.



Sink Unit: I think I'll do a separate post in a couple of weeks about how we made over this console table we picked up on eBay and turned it into a sink unit. But in essence Ben cut out holes for the waste pipes and sat two sinks on top of a unit which we sanded, varnished, painted and changed the knobs on. I love how it looks and it's great for storage. We got given the mirror, which was originally gold, by our neighbours who were about to take it to a charity shop and then we just painted it the same colour as the bathroom unit.

We also replaced the window to a wooden sash style, plastic windows are a bug bear of mine. The two houses next to us have their original Victorian windows so ours looked out of place until we changed it. I also hated that 'ice' frosted glass and just got the bottom half of it glazed for privacy. It's lovely to look out onto the garden now whereas previously we couldn't. I found some bargain Sanderson striped fabric which tied in with our paint colours from Returned to Glory, a vintage style charity shop in Berkhamsted and had a roman blind made for the window.


After Photos:











Then to finish off, all we needed were towels, a few accessories, candles and a plant.




Love lighting all the candles and running bubble baths.

R <3 xx




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6 comments

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. I love this, what a beautiful bathroom!! It's motivating me to do something about our dingy bathroom.... Keep up the good work, I am loving the blog so far. x

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  3. I love what you did. It is so relaxing to look at and I am sure you are enjoying it. I am in the process of gathering pictures of what I like in a bathroom. We will be redoing outs in about 6 months after we finish another project. It seems like an endless task to turn a house around.

    Essie Reed @ Valley Home Improvement

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  4. Refurbishing house is a quite tricky issue, because it takes lots of time and money.

    It is important to employ the available resources the best way possibile, in order to get the most satisfying outcome.

    Bathroom should be characterised by soft colours, elegant and tasteful furniture, thanks to which people are able to have some relax and take care of themselves.

    Wilfred Andrews @ LB Plumbing and Heating

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  5. At the moment the amount of double insualted lights being created. painters decorators southampton

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  6. What a stunner! Love this bathroom, reminds me so much of the home expert projects, you can have a look at them by clicking the link, maybe you'll get inspired for further improvements :)
    Good luck with that!

    ReplyDelete

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