Bathroom makeover: 'I didn’t think we had room for a bath'

Clever planning gave Enlli Thorman and her partner, Scott, room for a tub as well as a his and hers basin units. Here, Enlli shares the story of their bathroom makeover...

My story...

When we first stepped inside, I couldn’t quite believe how dirty this place was, but our last property, a flat 20 minutes away, was also a doer-upper so we weren’t really fazed.

This had been a student property, so the living room was being used as a bedroom and the bathroom was in a small room by the kitchen.

As we started renovating, we noticed there was plumbing in one of the upstairs bedrooms and realised it must have been the original bathroom.

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This made things a lot easier as there was already a waste pipe capped off and water pipes ready to be reconnected.

We spent a long time planning to make sure that we used the full potential of the space and then began to think about the furniture. With quite a big area by the bath, we felt a single basin would be lost in the room so decided to have double sinks and I had the idea of incorporating a hand-made wooden unit.

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Scott is really handy, so I explained what I wanted and he made it. We used scaffold boards for the main unit, fence posts for the legs and the shelf slats are pallet wood.

We had a tight budget, so I hunted online and locally to get the best bargains, and the whole renovation took about three months. It was tough doing all the work ourselves while working full-time, but it’s a serious place to relax in now so it was worth all the effort.

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Suitable storage

‘Because we were making the unit ourselves, I thought it would be easier to have shelving rather than making doors. I like the fact that everything is to hand and the open storage has become a bit of a styling feature.’

Enlli has filled the shelves with colourful towels and useful wicker baskets, and she’s used stylish glass jars for her stash of bath-time products. The decorative ladder is the perfect finishing touch to hang ready-to-use towels.

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Do it yourself

Enlli decided to do the tiling herself. With so many online tutorials around, it’s easy to save money if you’re willing to give DIY a go, but patience is key.

‘The herringbone design was a nightmare to tile,’ admits Enlli, ‘because it’s all about getting everything square so the tiles stack nicely. It was hard getting the measurements right.’

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Clever floor planning

It can be hard to visualise how furniture will affect the room when planning your layout on a computer, so Enlli did a lot of sticking masking tape to the floor and drawing on walls to get a feel of where things would fit.

‘With modern lifestyles, a shower is essential and for us a bath is a luxury, so initially the shower was going to go where the bath is. But when I laid it out with the masking tape, I realised that if I just turned the shower around we could have both.’