One Tiny Bathroom, One Huge Transformation
Today I'd like to introduce you to our bathoom. Now, at under 3 metres square, our bathroom is quite literally the smallest bathroom in the world. When Andre, Penny, Enrique and I are all in there at night, scrambling for a turn in front of the mirror with our toothbrushes, it can be a VERY tight squeeze.
So to compensate for its super-tiny proportions, we decided to go all-out on the luxury factor.
Getting straight to the point, here's how grim the bathroom looked when we first moved in:
Yup - the previous owners decided that the best way to deal with The World's Smallest Bathroom was by hanging the door from the right-hand side of the door-frame, in order to cleverly reduce the size of the room by half. Genius.
They also decided it would be a great idea to install the world's largest sink - so large, in fact, that it overhangs the bath by some not inconsiderable distance, thus being ideally placed for the purposes of banging your knee against it when getting in and out of the shower:
The bathroom had no radiator, so they installed an electric heater under the bath (now there's a nice safety feature), and placed the ceiling light on a very long cord so the bare bulb nestled against the top of the shower curtain.
Readers, I can't quite believe we did it, but we put up with that bathroom for well over a year while we installed the kitchen, and transformed the garden - details coming soon! But with our wedding fast approaching (we got married in our very own Nest last summer - again, more details coming up!) and my obvious concern that our hideous bathroom wasn't quite going to co-ordinate with my beautiful vintage lace dress, our hand-sewn silk bunting, and our handmade invitations, we got stuck into that bathroom (literally, actually - two adults, two jack russells who insist on participating thoroughly in all DIY activities, and a new bath that didn't quite fit through the door didn't exactly leave us with much room to manoeuvre) and completely went to town on that bad boy!
Here are the gorgeous after photos:
I can hardly believe it's the same room. The smallest room in the house is now my favourite room - and with the underfloor heating, the dogs absolutely love it too - I often find them in there, spotted tummies pressed to the floor, luxuriating in the warmth.
Here's another before and after set:
And yes - this bathroom transformation was entirely DIY'd. You can view all the bathroom before and after photos, along with the kitchen before and afters, by checking out our photo gallery - when you flip between the photos you can really appreciate the difference!
I have tons more photos of the bathroom in progress - including the Day We Bought A Brand New Bath And Promptly Drilled Holes In It - stay tuned!
Before and After, Major DIY Projects | tagged Bathroom
Reader Comments (13)
what a transformation! the bathroom looks fabulous and so streamlined - a nice job. It also looks very easy to clean, which is important as there are better things to do in life than spend extra time cleaning around fiddly bits :)
Thanks for commenting! Yes, it is very easy to clean, partly because it's teeny tiny! Which leaves lots of time free for the more important things in life, like sitting in the bath with a glass of wine and a book :)
That is encouraging,
My bathroom is approximately 1200 mm wide, it is under 1850mm high and about 2400mm long. Its in a cottage it's in a far worse state that the pictures of your original bathroom. I can't find a shower cubicle to fit in there as the smallest size is 700mm and I need to fit a toilet alongside. It has a bath which is about 650 mm wide with sink taps!, which incidentally have leaked under the bath causing untold troubles. It appears to have been done on a shoe-string. There is a window above the toilet in this ground floor bathroom which opens out onto the neighbours garden seeing as they decided to purchase the vast majority of the garden that belonged to the house 4 months before we moved in and one way or another and moved the boundaries. oh did I forget to say its a Grade II listed building and the council expect us to submit planning permission to put a new window in on an adjacent wall and block up the old one for some privacy! We've put up with it for four years since its our first house.
Any tips, other than move house of course!. :)
Blimey, Jude - where to start! Your comment actually inspired me to run downstairs and measure our bathroom (yup, our bathroom is on the ground-floor too) to see if your bathroom actually steals the crown of Smallest Bathroom In The World - I'm pleased to say that the Nest retains the honour, weighing in at a majestic 2.52m square, but you come in a very close second at 2.88m square - and of course get bonus points for the awkward shape, the sink-taps-as-bath-taps, and the horrendous window-opening-onto-neighbour's-garden situation.
I'm assuming that you will have stuck some window privacy film over the window - but I think your only real long-term option here is to pursue the council for planning permission. I don't know what's up with the English planning system; I mean, fair enough, you don't want people randomly building pink castles on their front lawns, but you would think a bathroom window opening onto a neighbour's garden would inspire a free pass :-(
In terms of the layout - I'd go for the shower over the bath option, rather than a separate bath and shower. That way you could have the toilet and sink next to each other at the end of the room, and then the shower-bath along the wall at the other end (assuming that isn't where your door is). We got our compact suite at B&Q - their website isn't particularly good for figuring out precise measurements, so it's easier to pick up a catalogue from the store and look through that. They also have those curved baths that are slightly more narrow at one end than the other. Oh, and measure your space precisely so you know exactly how much room you have to manoeuvre - when you're working in a tiny space, even 1cm can make a difference!
To make the room feel larger, you could also put tiles all the way up to the ceiling - we did this in our bathroom, and it makes the room feel more streamlined. You also put up a couple of large mirrors - we bought ours from Ikea - and try and hide as much bathroom clutter as possible in a mirrored cabinet (John Lewis do a good range of slim cabinets).
Good luck - and I'd love to hear how it turns out in the end!
Thanks for posting this. It is the only thing I've found on all of google that has stopped me from crying about my bathroom. I will have to measure it, because I'm pretty sure I have you beat for the smallest bathroom! :) I have bookmarked this page and plan to steal your design. It's perfect!
Aha, a challenger for the crown! Get measuring :-)
Yay - The listed Building Consent came through on the 1st June 2010!! I am hoping to move house but if I can't then I want to be the one to throw the sledgehammer through the wall first!
Thanks for your comments, I can't believe that you've beaten me on the smallest bathroom in the world ;)
Finally I found something which may help me out with my bathroom: width1.40M*Length1.80M in which i have to place a shower a WC and a sink.
Please advise me about the design. I 've been struggling since long with very low satisfaction at the end.
Thanks.
Jude, that's awesome! Do you have permission to extend the bathroom and increase the size, or to change the position of the window (or both)?
Fara - my bathroom is slightly smaller than yours, and we managed to fit in a bath, shower, WC and sink, so don't give up hope! If you install a wall-hanging WC and sink you will save on floor space - and you could also think of installing a sliding bathroom door that would slide across the wall outside the bathroom rather than a regular door that would open into it and take up valuable floor space.
Apart from that my best advice is to measure your space over and over again, and to check the dimensions of as many baths, WCs, sinks etc as you can find. You can potentially increase the size of the room by approx 2cm by having plaster and paint on the walls instead of tiles - and even chip into the wall around the bath if necessary. When you're working in a space this small, even 0.5cm can make a difference as to whether you can fit something in or not.
Accidently found this site while looking for great ideas how to make our tiny bathroom look nice and found this idea in photos. GREAT, EXCELLENT and big thanks for this from us :). Our idea about colour scheme also matches to the one showed here, so will be easy to imagine and explain to others (to men who will implement this in reality).
The last couple of pic say it all.I love the new sink,completely fitting into a new design and the bath tub is more prominent now then it was before.These tiles gave a bathroom a completely new look.
i love this .. you've done so well in your design of choice and i too have one of the smallest bathrooms in the world and like you it has a bath in it too. i will be using your design here as my inspiration. Thank you for sharing,
Angela
London living
Not sure what happened but preview of post didn't work. Apologies if there's a duplication. A follow up on the second smallest bathroom in the world. The new window was installed last summer. It is a wooden casement window with frosted glass. it took a while for the joiner to make the window and for the builder to be able to install it. I did get the listed building consent but omitted to obtain a form to complete for the additional planning permission but paid the fee about £145 and then it was authorised veyry quickly once the inspection fee had been paid. A visit from the council, it did seem all a little over the top to be fair but it's completed, I may not ask Tunbridge Wells BC for LBC or PP again ever, there is a company I hear that are prepared to engage in all this nonsense for a princely sum which I wished I had just paid in the first place. Three years later the bathroom is now clean and bright, plenty of ventilation and I enjoy a relaxing bath now and again. It's been painted so fresh and bought some decorative bits. The view of the rusted critter window is no longer there and from the bath I now see a plastered wall which gives the sense of much more privacy. The bath is still there but I have it in mind to replace the tabs and reenamel it. I will replace the sink and hopefully the toilet at some point but since it's in a cottage it's not modern but has a beach theme with some candles and its smells delightful and it's no longer damp which helps with the ventilation keeping my respiratory problems in check. No mould no more! I am happy with it, it's small and it's cold but it's clean and it's dry... :). Thanks for all the advice I may take it up a notch one day and even have it tiled in there but for now it's all good.