A slight change of plan
Now that we know the finished floor level we can look at the drainage and layout for the bathroom and utility… and well, let’s just say we’ve made a few changes…
With the walls down and the floor level finalised we re-looked at the space at this end of the cottage… and started thinking.
Before it was a small utility with a door leading into a small bathroom, and the red room (as we called it!) had one window and was a bit dark… and we were never really sure what we would use this room for as you walked through it to get to the other two rooms…
Decision 1 – Utility
With the walls down the room was so much lighter from the second window in the utility and the glazing in the back door (our new back door is a stable door with glazing too), so we decided not to put the wall back up, leaving an open plan space. Plus until phase 2 when we dig back the garden and put doors out from the kitchen, this door is our access to the garden – so the utility room will also double up as a social space in the summer months. The utility has the same finish as our kitchen – shaker cupboards, belfast sink, oak worktops – and now it will have a little breakfast bar to sit around too – we’ll just need to order a back panel for the units.
Decision 2 – bathroom
Once the finished floor level was set after the dig out, it was very obvious the soil pipe was floating quite high in the air so some changes needed to be made…
After taping out a few ideas on the floor and lots of discussions, we decided the soil pipe and drainage needed to be moved and there was also the discussion of how we heat the water at this end of the house. The boiler is in the middle of the house, which is quite a long run to this end… and that wastes a lot of water every time you turn on the hot tap.
Slowly a plan came together… in theory at least!
Original layout
New layout
The new plan… a larger bathroom with the entrance round the corner. A walk in shower rather than a bath… and an open plan utility room – using the same cupboards and worktop we’ve already got on site but with a different configuration.
We’ve also decided to put an unvented cylinder with immersion in the attic to feed the shower, basin and sink at this end which in the long term will be more economical and save a lot of water. We’ve also talked about installing some solar panels in phase 2 which will help us be more sustainable too.
It sounded relatively easy to move the soil pipe and lower it… but there were lots of things that could go wrong… our mains water pipe also came in at the same place everything needed to go and we weren’t really sure where the pipes were outside, plus we had the downpipe from the gutters here too…
A big hole later and it turned out to be quite simple… the water mains and the downpipe were fine where they were, a new junction was put in for the soil and water pipes and voila – all sorted in a day – yey!
