Those of you who have been following for a while will know that we are slowly restoring and updating an ancient, crumbling yet beautiful Georgian house in England; working our way as quickly as inspiration and budget will allow (very slowly, in the case of the latter). It’s a battle against the elements; even as one coat of paint dries in a room, a strange and ominous water stain will seep through the ceiling of another. A sense of intimacy is created quickly with new guests who soon realise that every toilet flush clangs and reverberates around the house for a good 10 minutes; there are no secrets here. The house will be something of a life’s work, and is frustrating and wonderful – often in equal measure. We moved here two years ago this Christmas, and have so far tackled much of the downstairs; the kitchen, playroom and hallway have all appeared here on the blog.
Our next project was the overhaul of our bedroom and its en suite bathroom. We moved out of it more than two months ago for a job that we thought would take two weeks… we (and our builders) should definitely have known better by now! Having been camping out in the spare room since September, we finally reclaimed our own bed yesterday, with great relief and general giddiness. As we put the finishing touches to our bedroom, here’s a peek at the bathroom, which we’ve completely overhauled. I’ve interspersed the before and after pictures so that you get a sense of the layout and evolution.
Let’s start view into the bathroom from our bedroom before;
And after…
The bathroom had a very strange false step buried beneath dark green carpet (seen below), which was presumably crafted as a way of improving drainage at some point in the 70s or 80s. It had to go; beyond being a complete hazard in the middle of the night, it also reduced the floor space significantly. Oh, and the drainage thing obviously didn’t work; our en suite had no actual toilet; for that you needed to head down the corridor.
We took out the step, removed half of the wall-to-wall cupboards (which the step had been cut into, making them look a bit odd), and stripped out the old shower, replacing it with a hidden-cistern WC instead. An old armchair has been moved from the spare bedroom and has quickly settled into the corner here instead. Underfloor heating warms the new travertine stone which we laid instead of the carpet.
We think that the room is likely to have originally been a nursery bedroom, and contains a chimney breast (boxed in behind the sinks) and alcoves. The alcove to the right of the sinks used to house a built-in wardrobe, but one which we seldom used, being in a bathroom and far away from our other storage. It also had a weird half-wall which further bisected the space, and which we took down.
We replaced it with a huge walk-in shower…
For the main sink area, we stripped out the old, stained green marble top and inset basins, and chipped off the tiles to reveal the chimney breast and fireplace; incredibly, it hadn’t been boarded up so also contained several fossilised birds (eek!) and - more interestingly – a time capsule from the previous owners, and a newspaper that was more than 50 years old. I’ll share that in a future post; it makes for wonderful reading. After properly stabilising the chimney breast and wall, we had it re-plastered and tiled before choosing simple washbowl sinks with inset taps. The eagle-eyed will recognise that they are now mounted on our former hall table; we thought it would look beautiful in the space, so after sealing the wooden surface we asked our joiner to plumb the washbowls through it.
For aesthetically-pleasing storage of the things we use all the time, we found these poured-concrete planters at our local garden centre (a bargain at £15), which easily hold bits and bobs like hairbrushes, toothpaste and so forth. Hand towels are stored in the vintage dough bowl which again you may recognise from our apple-picking and other adventures – so much of this bathroom is recycled from other parts of the house.
An old French milking stool (a flea market find last year) acts as a stand for shower essentials;
‘That’s all very well’, I hear you cry; ‘but where do you store all your un-beautiful bathroom products, hmm?’ I can imagine you saying it, because that was exactly my husband’s question when I described to him my vision for a bathroom with nothing in it (or near as dammit). Well. Not that I am going to confess to owning anything unsavoury like haemorrhoid cream, waxing supplies, dandruff shampoo etc, but IF I did, they would surely all be housed in the magnificently huge cupboards we retained and which hide all manner of sins. Believe me, it’s like the episode of Friends where Monica’s secret closet full of junk is discovered.
We’ve only been able to use the bathroom for 24hrs so far, so we’re still pondering where to place things and wall decor. We’ve moved a huge picture up from downstairs which we love and are living with to see how it all works together. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to turn the old cupboard doors from the units we removed into window shutters, by stripping them and adding hinges to produce period, fold-back shutters…we shall see.
There are gremlins and small irritations, of course; the limitations of ancient plumbing and old houses means we have had to site the heated towel rail on the opposite side of the room to the sink, for example. We knew that we would have to plan this room somewhat on the fly, as we wouldn’t know what was underneath and behind the old bathroom until everything had been stripped away. All told though, we are very, very happy – not least because we’ll have no more midnight sprints along a cold corridor to the bathroom, stubbing toes and shivering as we go.
Here’s a quick overview of some of the colours we chose and fittings we used, for any bathroom fetishists or if you’re about to start a similar project yourself…
Now, time for a shower. Only my third today; the thrill of the new, eh?
Kate
Gillian
It’s like a monastery, but in a very good way. Clean, simple, elegant and very beautiful. It’s also bigger than my son’s bedroom – how I envy you those generous Georgian room sizes. x
Rita from designmegillah
Stunning–Enjoy it!!
Nicole
Stunning Kate. What a transformation!
nicola baird
I don’t like this, I love it. Hope it’s gorgeous to use too. Nicola
Di
Looks amazing, I hope to redo my bathroom in the new year….but it will be nothing as glorious as this – my bathroom is so long and narrow that you can’t even open the door inwards because it hits off the bath!
Jill McKee
Just WOW. What an unbelievable transformation. It’s so calm and serene. I absolutely love everything about it, but my favorite is that piece you turned into a vanity. It’s all completely stunning!
lovinghomemade
Beautiful – an amazing transformation.
Louise Nicolleau
Ah Kate,love love love your nest pictures,and once again you haven’t disappointed-I have drooled,googled and gone back to drool a little more over all your wonderful detail. (Now obsessed with that dough bowl-I sense an ebay stalking coming on) thank you for letting us ‘in’ to your beautiful home.
Lou x
kim @ DESIGN + LIFE + KIDS
I’m always amazed when I see carpet in bathrooms. I’m not quite sure how that caught on! Your remodel is beautiful… love your shower space… like a spa at home.
JBA
This is incredible… I don’t know how you ever saw the “after” in your head when you looked at the “before”…! Amazing.
katengland
Fabulous! Country farmhouse meets elegant spa. Thanks for sharing.
Kate
Kate, that’s EXACTLY the style I had in mind – brilliant description! There’s a hotel in the Cotswolds called Calcot Manor which we stayed in once and which had the perfect mix of rustic relaxed style with decadent spa elements; given that one weekend there is all we’ll ever quite afford, trying to recreate the look at home seemed the next best thing..
Mindy
Oh, you must be so excited. And relieved to check it off the to-do list! It’s absolutely beautiful. I must mention that green carpeted stair. Oh dear lord.
Kate
Ha, Mindy… I KNOW!! I try never to criticise anyone else’s taste, but I do find myself (still), wondering what they were thinking. Our lovely neighbours once told us that the previous owners had confided to them over drinks that they thought the carpet – which features in most rooms – was perhaps a mistake. We’re measuring progress on the house by the square footage of leaf-green carpet we remove…
Kate
Kate, how wonderful! Do you have any in progress shots? I am fascinated to see the hidden fireplace. I am a bit obsessed with them at the moment given that winter has hit here in cold Canada…
Kate
Hi Kate, I wish we did! Seemingly every day I intended to take some but never quite actually got around to it (which seems crazy now given how long the whole thing took). The fireplace was an old cast iron one that still had ashes and a log in the grate (after decades!), plus 3 birds and a roof tile. We cleared it out, boarded it and bricked it in so that it can be discovered all over again if future owners want to convert the room back again.
I hear that you have snow in Canada – delicious for a week, but then somewhat tiring come March, right?
Raven Corwin, aka Meggie
Gorgeous and, as Gillian said, elegant in its simplicity and light. Wow, Kate. Now I have to catch up on your previous remodel posts made before I found your blog!
nrhatch
That is one of the most ZEN-tastic baths I’ve ever seen.
Ali
That is incredible – how soothing it is. I have bathroom envy .
Modern Country Style
I love the mirrors! May I ask where you found them?
All looking gorgeous!
Sarahx
Kate
Hi Sarah, thank you! Yes they’re super-cool aren’t they; I found them on ebay; I searched for ‘limed oak mirror’ thinking I wanted something that looked aged and un-bathroom like. The same mirror came up in listings by various different sellers so I think it is obviously a reasonably common trade item. Ours are huge (about 1m tall), but it came in various shapes and sizes.
Barbara Backer-Gray
Interior decorating: yet another niche that is weeping for the lack of you! (How’s that for a sentence?)
Redesigned By M
Great style, Kate! Everything about the renovation is just perfect. ~M.
Joanna
Gor-geous. Feel zen just looking at the pictures. Love the rustic-luxe combo.
Emily Wignall Design
so beautiful! i love the all the stone with the stripped wood. gorgeous!
cheryl
This is absolutely stunning! I have to say this might be the very first travertine bathroom I actually adore. I normally find the beige off-putting, but here it is quite soothing and warm, the perfect foil for the crisp white.
I do have to ask, how will you maintenance the hidden cistern toilet? For instance, we find that every now and then we have to clean out the water tank and the internal plumbing due to the ever-filling tank…
Kate
Ah Cheryl, great question! If you look really, really closely you can probably see that we have created a kind of panel behind the toilet which is tiled and then lightly sealed in place, so that we can periodically slice through the sealant and lift it out to access the cistern. That’s the theory, anyway!
toemailer
Always preferred a walk in shower
Tonia
Gorgeous! You do have fantastic taste. I think your home is becoming my dream house…….
"FlyBytes/Bites"
My dream bathroom Kate just Devine love it .. I’d move into your bathroom
jet
wooow this looks so lightly and lovely and tough as well.
I’m still working too to seatling down in a new built house. The problem is there are to less walls to use, i only have windows.LOL
I’m happy in my new home and that it’s laying on the top of the building because here are in those old Netherlands centre of the cities the streets are very narrowly. So at first i had the problem to solve that i had to made curtains for my privacy. You can watch to easily in the overside homes.
I never had glass curtains, but now i’m glad that i have done this job.LOL
i like the light interiour of yours, i try the same.;-D
So thanks for your sharing and good luck and much strenght with the rest of the house.;-D
Anonymous
Fabulous! Would that be Shaded White on the walls again? Considering using it in most of my house…
Kate
Hi, No! Finally a room in a different colour… this time it’s Flake White by Fired Earth; it’s a beautiful greyish white based on old artists’ oil paint colours.. very soothing