So it’s been 15 years since we last tackled this room. When we moved in all those years ago the bathroom was pretty much how it would have been when it was installed in 1939. Original everything – high mounted toilet cistern, Art Deco tiles, cast iron bath & matching panel and basin. The only additions were a heated towel rail made using copper pipes and joints. Looking back I wish I’d had the foresight to keep these fixtures as they would cost a fortune to replace now, but you live and learn eh?
We lived with this bathroom for a few years as buying the house itself and having 2 boys under the age of 3 had completely cleared us out of cash, time and energy! The breaking point for this room came when my oldest, who was only about 5 or 6 at the time, pulled one of his suctioned bath toys from the wall along with three 65 year old tiles into the bath with him!
So what did we do? We completely gutted the room of course, including the removal of the built in corner airing cupboard (idiots).
We took the sleek, modern, glossy route for our new bathroom and I have to say that it has actually held up quite well considering the amount of testosterone and Lynx that has passed through it over the years (eww). At this point the bathroom and toilet are still separate, so did we do matching decor in the loo? No, of course we didn’t. We used leftover tiles, from 1998, from our previous house, (tired and broke remember?)
Thank the lord that we had a leak in our upstairs en-suite, (2014 loft conversion is a blog for another day), which damaged the ceiling enough that it had to come down, forcing us to face the fact that renovation is massively overdue!
So, here we are at the beginning of this ‘journey’ (bleurgghhh) to a beautiful bathroom