Organising A Bathroom

[braided-rug]

As you know we removed our shower from the laundry. Now I am thinking about relocating the shower in the bathroom. The bathroom is long and skinny and has two doors in it. At the moment the bath is long and skinny too rather than across the short end. There is room for a shower at the end of the bath, maybe not if it has a door that opens out.

Here is some useful information for designing bathrooms.

"When working out the placement of showers, baths or vanity units a circulation space of 700mm in front of the unit should be allowed for as a minimum workable requirement.

Standard bath space to allow for is 750mm wide by either 1500mm or 1650mm in length.

Vanities are normally 500mm deep, 800mm high with a variety of lengths depending upon requirements and whether 1 or 2 vanities (bowls) are to be included.

Formed, standard shower bases fitted to most bathrooms are normally 900mm by 900mm with variations up to 1800mm long by 800mm wide. On a concrete slab where often the shower base is formed by a recess in the slab and then tiled, the size can be made to any requirement (bearing in mind the tied in cost of the shower screen)".

From: www.ausdesign.com.au/articles/article25.html

[braided-rug]

We were going for the shower over the bath option at one point, but realised our bath is not very good for standing in, it possibly is designed to be a spa bath, not sure. It is very narrow and I feel you could get wrapped up in the shower curtain accidently.

There would be about 700mm outside the shower, but that would make it very difficult to walk past the shower. I can touch both walls I think.

[braided-rug]

The thing I learnt about showers is that which base depends on the flooring. We need a different base, ie polymarble for the concrete slab in the laundry, and can have a different brand for the bathroom. The only advantage in the bathroom one I picked out is that the shower can be a non see through glass if you wish.

[violet]

We've had a shower over the bath for the last 20 years and it's been fine, however, in a skinny room I'd go for a shower only so that there's space to move around. Depends just how skinny it is of course!

Regarding the shower curtain, Ikea sometimes have a plain white plastic one in stock, which has magnetic weights fused into the bottom of the curtain. These stick to the bath and keep the bather from being engulfed in curtain! I use it as an under-curtain, and have made a cotton shower curtain in a nice fabric which hangs from the same curtain rings. In other words, the decorative curtain and the plastic liner hang from the same curtain rings, but only the plastic liner hangs in the bath.

Storage will be an issue for you, given that the children are getting older, I suppose.

A friend put a large corner shower in her bathroom, which opened the room up a bit.

[braided-rug]

We ended up with a slim line vanity to match the bath, ie long and skinny. It is Posh Bristol like the taps throughout the house, though some are look alikes to get the bib and pillar taps as our house is brick inside.

It is the semi recessed one in white like the bath. We left the mirrored cupboard in white above, and the semi recessed I noticed matches the curve at the top of both mirrors. The chrome on the taps matches the chrome towel and handtowel rails.

I can now use this vanity without getting the feeling of falling in the bath when I place my feet, I think to open the door at the bottom.

I will get the Ikea look if I still have my Nana's kitchen cupboard against the wall at the end of the bath. It is better than having to give the cupboard away or sell it. At the moment the basin doesn't have a drain. But looks really nice.

[braided-rug]

OK, I found a downside today, when the plumber put the doors on etc. Though OK, I wish I had thought to put the drawers on the left hard up against the wall. I didn't think to get the drawers the opposite way to the ones we have currently. The door won't open all the way out with the handle.

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