A bathroom transformation

Turning two small spaces into one big space...

Hello guys and gals, how are we all this week?

I've been looking back through pictures of the house again, pictures from when we first viewed it, and I still can't believe how far we've come with it! This week I'm going to share the bathroom refit with you. This was one of the first rooms we (the builders) tackled and one of the rooms I was most excited about...

We had previously refurbished a flat before this house but made do with how the bathroom was, one of the only rooms we didn't touch in that place. Therefore I couldn't wait to turn ideas that had been whirling around in my head into reality.

So here are some before pictures...

Again, like the kitchen refit, as soon as I saw the bathroom I knew exactly how I would like it to be. In these pictures it shows how the toilet and bathroom were separate and although it is handy to have a separate toilet, I thought the space could be used so much more effectively. 

My other half is a bit of a giant and he always wanted to have a separate shower, rather then a shower over the bath and to do this (and not loose the bath altogether) it made perfect sense to knock the two rooms into one. 

Before...

So that is what happened.... Looking at the picture on the left you can see the door to the bathroom and to the right of that was the very small toilet...

After

And on the picture to the right you can see how the doorway to the bathroom was bought forward into the landing, to the edge of the stairs. Although we only gained a small amount of space it meant, once the wall between the two rooms had gone, that there would be room for a bath and a sshower unit. 






So walls came down, old bathroom suits where ripped out and walls were plastered. We didn't live in the house when all of these bit was being done and looking back at these pictures now, thank goodness!!! 

                             

 

                                         

Where the shower unit ended up being placed is where the toilet room used to be. I remember feeling so happy at this point, seeing it all in place. Neil (the other half) had pretty much let me tell the builder where I wanted everything, because he just couldn't imagine where it would all go. Pressure!!! So I was pleased and relieved when it all ended up fitting into place just as I had imagined. 

I wanted the suit, fixtures and fittings to be traditional to suit the style of the house. I actually wanted to keep the old sink and the toilet as the style was perfect but they were broken when they were ripped out and the builder helped us to source pieces that were not to dissimilar. 

So it was all in! Time to make it look less Swedish sauna and more... elegant, I guess!

I took a very long time deciding what colours to paint this room and ended up colour matching with a Dulux paint to Farrow and Ball's Cornforth White on the panelling and Blackened on the walls. I always said I didn't want a blue bathroom in case it felt too cold and I remember really panicking that it was too blue when we first painted it. In the end, with the warmth of the dark wood flooring, toilet seat and picture frames it ended up feeling classic and warm, not cold in the slightest. Anyway, I can't see the blue in it any more but I think you always have a moment of dread after you have spent hours painting a room. 

On to the favourite parts of the room...

      

     

Well, I didn't know you could be in love with a radiator before this bathroom (dramatic much?!?) and I know how much Neil loves the shower. Apparently this is the first shower that he can actually stand fully under, the builder measured how tall he was so he could make sure that could happen! It's all in the details.  
  
 
I don't think I've ever lived in a house where I have filled the walls of the bathroom with pictures and I really think it brings more to the room. The bathroom is often a place that can be neglected when it comes to displays but it can really turn it into a much more cosy place to be. 

The floor was another big success of the room. We ended up going for a dark laminate but it has rubber seals through the joins. It is from Quick Step and is called ship deck laminate you can read about it here our builder recommend it to us and I really love it. 

So there's the bathroom. I hope that might of given you some ideas for your own bathroom. Now if you don't mind I'm off to have a bubble bath. 

Amy x

Roman blind tutorial...

How tricky can it be?...

I posted a picture on Instagram last week showing a Roman blind I made for my bathroom and it got a whole lotta love (likes)! I was very appreciative of this, as I always am but particularly this one as it has been something I have been very nervous about making. 

First of all I was tempted by the tutorial in 'The Great British Sewing Bee' book but it wanted you to put the channels for the dowels into the blind by sewing pin tucks into the lining. The maths worried me and I needed a super simple tutorial to start me off so, after a lot of time on Pintrest, I went for this one on the 33 Shades of Green Blog. 

This one suggested making separate pockets, that you stitch on afterwards, for the dowels and I thought this would take away the scary maths calculations. 

I'm not sure I would do the pockets again, for various reasons. I'll get to that later... 

If in doubt, stripe it out...

So I have the tutorial I want, I have the measurements, now for the fun part, choosing the fabric. I knew I wanted a stripe (I always want a stripe) and after a little nosey around old faithful, Dunelm, I decided on the one in the picture above. At £11.99 per metre I was happy with the quality and the price. The total cost of this blind (with some old bits of wood from the garage for fixtures) came to around £40, which considering the cost of custom made Roman blinds I thought was pretty reasonable. 

So, on with the make. As usual I'm not going to do a step by step guide as the tutorial I have linked is great but I hope you will read this before you do it and learn from my mistakes.

After measuring my fabric to the required length the tutorial asks you to iron a 2 inch hem  along the sides and bottom of both the front (patterned) fabric and the lining...

... what I particularly liked about this tutorial was these mitred corners. I had never seen this before and I'm not sure when else you could use this method and what for but look how neat and tidy these corners are! 

 Later on in the project you will use these tidy corners as little envelopes for a weighty piece of wood for the bottom of the blind. I didn't realise this until that point in the instructions and I'm not sure why, but I thought it was really neat! 

Once you have ironed down 2 inch hems along the sides and bottom of the two pieces of fabric lay them on top of each other, wrong sides together.

Little tip here; lay them out and pin them. Corners first, then the middle of each side. Make sure you pull the lining fabric pretty taut. I think my lining was a little saggy. This wasn't really a problem but I think if the lining was tighter it would look more professional. Now, pin pin pin, and when you think you have pinned enough pin some more. I'm a lazy pinner and this was not a good trait to have on this project, I'll get to that in a little while.    

Now you are at the point where you have to make long pockets for your dowels. There are some clever measurements that you need to follow for this part and the linked tutorial tells you all of that. But this is where I made some mistakes and after this I'm sure I would think again about whether to make the channels through the pin tuck method rather than these pockets. 

The major issue with this method is the ability to stitch in a straight line. I thought I was pretty good at this but lazy pinitus got me again. 

So the pockets look all lovely and straight here but...

I didn't pin enough (again!!!!) and I went a bit skewiff :-(

Now, this isn't the biggest problem for these blinds, as I do not intend to have them drawn and I only went wonky on the last pocket. As you have to stitch through both pieces of material you can see the top stitching on the front of the blind. Therefore, if you intend to draw the blinds, take my advice and pin pin and pin again so that your channels are super duper straight!

The tutorial gives you some suggestions about how to fit the blind to a baton. I didn't have a staple gun so I used drawing pins, not perfect but fine. It also suggests that you fit the blind to the baton above the window with Velcro but the blind was far too heavy so it ended up being drilled. 

So here it is in situ and as I said previously you can't see the wonky stitching when it is open but when it's closed it doesn't look so great. 

Next time I would definitely go with the pintuck option. For 1. If my top stitching is poor it doesn't matter so much and 2. The maths isn't as scary now I look at it again. 

I'm hoping to make another one of these blinds for the landing window in the near future. That window is much bigger than this one so I'm glad I had a practice run first. I'll no doubt blog about that project and hopefully you will see an improvement. 

All in all I am very happy with the finished result and I am glad that I took the plunge into the scary world of window dressing.

Do it! I'm sure you'll be fine.

Amy x