To think designing a flat with the shower in the living room is taking the piss?

[StudioFlat]

Disclaimer: This doesn't affect me personally, just looking for a discussion.

Some friends are trying to make some extra money by converting part of their garage (not even the whole thing) into a studio flat. It's absolutely tiny, you could touch the bed and the hob at the same time. They've included a teeny little second room for a toilet, but the shower is in the living room / bedroom / kitchen. The whole space is about 16 square metres, which I think 9 times out of 10 is going to be a pretty depressing living space but the design is also rubbish.

Sadly the rental situation where we live is such that some poor sap will almost certainly be willing to pay an obscene amount to live there but I think it looks like an absolute shithole. It's clean and new so that's not the issue, but sooo cramped and yeah, shower in the living room.

AIBU to think they are taking unfair advantage of desperate people in a terrible rental market? Or are there people who wouldn't mind having their shower in their living room? Are they simply resourceful entrepreneurs and everything's OK as long as someone is willing to pay to live there (as long as you comply with relevant regulations of course)?

A French friend of DH's (who renovates houses for a living) used to own a tiny flat near the Gare du Nord in Paris, where we sometimes stayed for free in the days before DC. Originally it shared a communal bathroom with other flats, but he squeezed in a tiny shower and toilet IN THE KITCHEN. To get to the toilet you went to the corner of the kitchen, climbed through the shower tray and into the teeny toilet cubicle.

Later he renovated his girlfriend''s flat in another old Parisian apartment block. In that one, to get to the bathroom, you started from the kitchen, climbed up a slippery plastic spiral staircase into their bedroom, ducked and crawled through a little tunnel, crawled over a futon in the guest bedroom (cupboard) and presto! you arrived in the bathroom. Which had no door.

I always wondered what the renovations were like that he did for his paying customers! He is terribly charming though.

horrible

I was so thinking it was Dublin as well!!

They actually had adverts on a very popular letting site recently for a 'chalet'... it was a fecking shed!!

OP this is like a game of through the keyhole- Im dying to know where it is now

I wouldnt want to have my shower in my living room.

I lived in something like this as a student and actually it was fine, was 13sqm which is 4sqm above the legal minimum for that city. Basically I had a 'kitchen', then through a partition with a very narrow slanted opening I had a bedroom, shower and sink in the same space. Mould did grow more quickly but easily zapped. Shared loos in the corridor. Was ca. £500/m for a 'chambre de bonne' up five flights of stairs with no lift. Gorgeous quirky little place, loved it! I could've spent a few hundred more for a bigger place but simply didn't want to.

As long as it has good insulation, isn't damp etc, then it's probably good for students or people who need somewhere to crash during the week. I assume they won't rent it to more than one person & are complying with all the normal building regulations.

Studio flats don't have living rooms & if you said 'the shower's in the bedroom' that sounds less shocking already. Do you like these friends generally?

My house is absolutely tiny (1 up, one down) and the shower is in the living room but it is at least a separate door so you are not showering in full view of other people. That arrangement sounds awful.

I looked at a "charming one bed, self contained annexe" once. Yup, garage. Well, 2/3 of a garage. The bedroom was big enough for a 3/4 sized double bed (touching the walls both sides), with a small wardrobe at the foot of the bed. Standing in the bedroom doorway (no door, not enough room), the TV was on the bedroom/lounge wall, the "kitchen" (2 hob, countertop halogen oven, cupboard and sink) was on the right hand wall and the 2 seater sofa on the left wall. The front door and porch were in front of you. The porch was there to create 2 recesses, the one on the right was the shower (you could stand in the shower - no door - and wash your hands in the kitchen sink) and the left was the loo (no door - can you see a theme!?) And you could sit on the couch and grab loo roll, and sit on the loo bashing your knee on the aforementioned loo roll. I declined to rent that one.

I was thinking about this thread this morning, I heard on the radio that Dublin average rents are now just under €1,800 per month. 😮 That’s up over 12% from this time last year.

Bananas one of my friends rents out a ‘chalet’ and gets some online abuse when she advertises it. But it’s properly insulated with central heating, a good sized shower room and a reasonable kitchenette. The people who rent it like living there. Irish people aren’t used timber buildings so they see wood and assume it’s the same as their garden shed.

it's a European city.

I can well believe this, because I've spent quite a lot of time in a European city (I won't out it but it's in the German-speaking world) where there are still tiny two-room flats without even their own toilet, and a shared toilet on the landing outside. (I mean in a cubicle, obviously, you don't just sit there in full view of everyone!)

I wouldn't personally want to move into the flat you've described (or indeed the ones with the toilet on the shared landing) but I bet someone will be happy to, a student maybe or someone who needs a base in the city during the week, but goes back to their family at weekends.