timfg.com
  • home
  • timfg
    • work
    • play
  • us
    • alison >
      • my aim is true
  • stuff
    • what's new
    • caravan
    • brenda
    • about the site
  • blog
  • contact

Edwardian houses have a lot of wasted space aka The Popup Boudoir

20/12/2016

0 Comments

 
We always intended to do this. 102 has a crappy old avocado bathroom in a state of disrepair, and an outside loo beside the back door. I personally think the latter quite handy, but the girls think it 'horrid' and 'full of spiders' and 'NOT A MODERN WAY TO LIVE' because they are girls and spoilt by American TV, in which every room in every house has it's own bathroom. To be fair, I don't particularly want them in our bathroom anyway, as even a tiny wee takes them half an hour and will involve them throwing clothes and towels all over the place, leaving massive slugs of toothpaste in the sink, hair-dye all over the towels and, quite possibly, the appropriation of MY RAZOR for god knows what, I am not prepared to ask.
​​
​So: Before.​
Picture
On the left...
Picture
...and on the right
There are some contextual bullets worth recording here:
  • The Before / After scenario is always going to be a winner if Before is a freezing empty shell of loft space, containing cold water tanks, boxes of old vinyl, bits of timber holding the roof up and a cheap fluorescent tube.
  • Putting a bathroom in the roofspace was rather more than just buying taps n'shit. We needed to build a room before it could be a bathroom. It's important that the roof stays up whilst you are bathing. It's important that the bath stays on the same floor if you sleep directly below it. Windows are a welcome bonus. 
  • The hard way to get this right is to employ structural engineers and do measurements and calcs and drawings and crap.  The easiest way is to notice that your neighbours have done much the same conversion, structurally at least, and pinch their plans. Then tell your builder to read them in the mirror.
  • Our existing boiler (on the ground floor) was a horrid Potterton thing and the hot water tank (on the first floor) was too small to support two showers, two baths and moronettes who think the time to leave the shower is signalled by the water becoming cold. So step one involved putting a new Worcester boiler at the other end of the loft space, installing a Megaflow pressurised tank next to it, carrying the gas supply up the side of the house to the attic and venting the boiler through the roof.  This was a good time to check out our friends AirBnB  facilities, 12 houses down the road.
  • SketchUp is a superb way to model spaces like this, to make sure everything fits. It's also a very good way to convey to Polish builders / plumbers / electricians your exact design intent. A picture speaks a thousand words and, more importantly, is polylingual.
  • Polish builders / plumbers / electricians are massively hardworking and multi-skilled. At least, mine were. Also, they brought me bottles of flavoured vodka.
  • The homework desk emerged as a good idea as I played around with Sketchup and trialled ideas as to how we might best use the space at the other end of the loft. The girls wanted chunky and white. Chunky and white is hard and expensive. Polish builders can do amazing things with the old floorboards.
  • The inset shelves - and the LEDs in the inset shelves - were never in my original design, they just formed as we realised what might be possible, informed by the input of Bart, the LED fanatic Polski sparks. Top chap.​
Some early design twiddling... and some later design finalising, once we'd settled on tiles and lights. Ish
Picture
Picture
A collection of interims:

​These next two are both taken from the doorway to the original loft-area

​Half way there: Panoramic, left to right
Picture
Finished: Panoramic left to right
Picture
And some finished bathroom porn
In summary: We're delighted at how it's turned out. So are the girls. The homework desk was a really good idea, but it's covered in ccosmetics, hair-straighteners, hairdryers... I'm not sure we'll ever get it back. We just need to get some doors... and carpet. And a soundbar, as recommended by Bart, as he can lose a subwoofer in the ceiling. This latter totally non-essential, but I'm easily persuaded...
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    All
    Cherish
    Eat
    Frame
    Geek
    Listen
    Ponder
    Watch

    What are these tags?

    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    August 2019
    April 2019
    July 2018
    June 2018
    February 2018
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    March 2016
    October 2015
    April 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012


    timmytime...?