Improving your bathroom: Moving it upstairs
In the earlier two articles in this short series about improving your bathroom, we looked at re-enamelling a bath and replacing cracked or broken tiles. Now we’re going to finish up with some more ideas about how you can add value to your home or rental property by making bathroom improvements.
Relocating the bathroom
If you decided that attempting to repair the bathroom was a false economy and you’d be better starting over by buying a new bathroom suite and tiling again from scratch, then you might also consider moving the bathroom to a different part of the house while you’re at it.
Downstairs bathrooms are very common in older properties, especially in Victorian and later terraced houses. It’s often the case that access to the bathroom is through the kitchen. This is probably because indoor bathrooms have been stuck on as an afterthought or as an extension to a house which originally didn’t have a modern bathroom at all.
Most people find it very inconvenient, if they need to go to the loo in the middle of the night, to traipse all the way downstairs, through the kitchen and finally reach the bathroom. Therefore, unsurprisingly, upstairs bathrooms are much more popular than downstairs ones. Having an upstairs bathroom can make your property more desirable to potential buyers, so it’s worth thinking about this possibility.
A fine balance
Create a Zen-like space and relax
However, you will need to consider whether the benefits will justify the costs involved in undertaking such a project. In some houses, the only option for creating an upstairs bathroom is to do so at the expense of a bedroom—for example, by changing the upstairs from three bedrooms to two bedrooms and a bathroom. Whilst the addition of an upstairs bathroom will add value to the house, the reduction of bedrooms from three to two will reduce its value. You’ll need to do your sums.
If you’re in doubt, you can research house prices in your area to give you an idea of the going rate for different property layouts in your area. You can do this online on websites such as RightMove. You can also talk to your local estate agents. They’ll probably be keen to advise you on local property values, especially if they hope you’ll become their customer when you come to sell the house!
In some houses, changing the layout will free up the space for a bathroom, perhaps by reducing the size of one or more bedrooms, or giving up cupboard space to help create a new bathroom. If space is very tight, you could create a shower room instead of a bathroom. Don’t forget that baths are available in a wide variety of different shapes and sizes, so with a bit of creative thinking, you might be able to fit a bathroom into a small space.
When you’re working out the cost for moving the bathroom upstairs, don’t forget to consider where the soil pipe is, as it could be a costly job to move it.
Well, that’s it for this short series about improving your bathroom. A related subject which we’ll be covering soon is en-suite bathrooms, so stay tuned!
Have you relocated your bathroom? Please use the comments form below to tell us about your experience. We’d love to hear from you.
