Our old bathroom was tiny with a tiny bath and a cracked sink. The bath needn't have been so small, as there was room for a larger one, but we're in France where the majority of men are less than six feet tall (182 cm) and don't need something half the size of an Olympic-sized swimming pool to bathe in.
We were tempted to retain the old bath as it was good and solid cast iron, but it was also stained and in awful condition, impossible to keep clean, bloody cold in the winter and meant I had to bathe with my knees round my ears. It had to go.
Then there was the front bedroom, which was huge - well compared to most English bedrooms it was. Our bedroom is on the same floor but over the kitchen, which is heated by the wood burning stove and remains quite a nice temperature thanks to the vent installed, but the front bedroom is over the shop, making it quite chilly during the colder months of the year.
We had considered using it as a spare room, but had discounted that idea when we discovered it was cold and more importantly, French house insurance rules state that rooms under 3 metres square (or 9 square metres), didn't count on the insurance and neither did bathrooms.
By partitioning off the front bedroom and adding an extra door, we would then be able to create an office and a bathroom. Converting the existing bathroom into a toilet, meant that we would no longer have to wake up in the middle of the night and negotiate our way downstairs to take a leak either. It also meant that it fitted with French preferences to keep the bathroom and toilets separate.
During the work we were having done, the room got partitioned with a stud wall that created a room of just under 9 square metres on one side which we use as the office and a second, larger room, which was to be the new improved bathroom.
When the plumbing and electrics were all in place, our bath was installed in its cradle and made ready for us to create our new bathroom, although we weren't able to use the shower, as the bath stood against a plain plastered wall on one side and nothing at either end.
Getting the shower going soon became a priority!
We knew doing the bathroom was going to be a difficult job as we had already done a bathroom at our previous house; not necessarily difficult, but a lot of fiddly work, which had to be done in a specific order.
Here, we planned to panel the entire bath side of the room except the area around the bath, which we would tile, create an airing cupboard in the corner and a removable panel in front of the bath so that the plumbing could be accessed in emergencies.
As can be seen from the picture (right), a chimney stack runs up the corner of the room behind the bath and because we a) didn't want increase the cost of the work involved to remove it from top to bottom and b) didn't want the extra mess - of which there was already more than we knew what to do with, we elected to box that in.
This killed two birds with one stone as the odd shape of the room could be disguised behind the paneling, thus giving us a nice, straight appearance to the finished product.
So with the materials all purchased, we were ready to move forward and begin the task of taking the bathroom from something that was just off being a bomb site, to being the finished product.
I would like to say that the work all came out perfect, but as the person who did a lot of the work, I can say without any fear of contradiction, that it does have a little bit of 'character' here and there.
The house runs the gamut of angles and not being a professional, I did tend to get caught out every now and again.
Having said that though, I am well pleased with the results. As is Pen.
Left shows the new basin we had installed and the chimney is now hidden behind the false wall. I would like to have utilised the space and put some shelves in the paneling, but decided instead to keep it simple, which also kept the costs down. The tongued and grooved isn't cheap when you're covering such a large area.
The other side (right) contains the airing cupboard which is heated using a timed 120 watt tube heater that we bought on-line from a British company, as the French don't have anything like it.
Tiling wasn't easy and if you were to look closely, you'd be able to see the fact that some tiles aren't quite in the right place.
Again, it's down to lack of experience and abundance of 'let's get this finished and we can live with that'.
Regardless of my lack of precision, the whole thing is water tight and does exactly what it's supposed to. It also means that we can shower now, which is usually more preferable than bathing.
The floor was stripped and waxed to bring up the wonderful colour. I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say that Pen spent an age on her hands and knees removing the old varnish.
We should have used an industrial floor sander, but it would have meant having to use magic to prevent the entire house being covered in sawdust.
Whilst Pen's method took a while, it was a whole heap cleaner and the results speak for themselves.
Among Pen's many DIY skills, she's also a dab hand at wallpapering.
This was on offer at La Maison in Gorron, brings a wonderful texture to an otherwise boring wall and fits with the overall effect nicely.
Well done, Pen!
The table was the first time I got to use my biscuit jointer to take two lengths of wood and seamlessly join them together. Best tool I've ever bought that and good fun to use too.
The table leg was supposed to be used in the kitchen, but some miscalculations meant that it was no longer required. The idea to use it in the bathroom was marvelous and it fits really well. The table should have been twice its length, but upon seeing how long it would actually have been, it was decided that we'd keep it smaller. That's why the power points are to the left and not in the middle as planned.
Overall, we're dead chuffed with our new bathroom and since the airing cupboard has actually been proved to work, it's been well worth the wait.
