Downstairs toilet and shower?

[Irie1980]

Hi - posting this here for traffic if that's ok!

My parents are determined to fit a downstairs toilet (and shower if possible) into their house - I've attached plans.

They live in a small enough 4 bed - the hallway is narrow and there is a stairs with storage underneath - this would be too tight to fit a downstairs loo unfortunately. There is a utility room down one step, with a passage way to outside, and then the garage to the front.

My dad will reluctantly lose some of the garage storage, but would be very reluctant to lose access to the back garden through the side passage way if at all possible.

Any ideas how to reconfigure this so you could fit a small loo and shower, while keeping a utility area and garage?
Thanks!

I think he will have to lose part of the garage, we changed ours to a ‘half’ garage and installed shelving so we actually have more storage than before and it’s more accessible. The other option you may not have considered is to use part of the living room as that looks quite a long room that could potentially be made a bit smaller. You could map it out and see how the furniture fits and feels.

How good is the parking? Do they need a garage?

Make a new door from bottom of stairs to garage
extend utility into hall then divide off as indicated by red line to make shower room

The garage is mainly used for tools and other storage. I'm sure he could do without some of it, but the other issue is that they'd need to apply for planning if they were to replace the roller door at the front of the house! So I think reducing the garage size would be ok, but totally renovating it might be out of the question for cost reasons too. It's tricky!

Can the toilet and shower go in the utility room?

If you are prepared to reduce the front room, could you move the door one door's width to the right. Then you slice off the short side of the left of the living room. Toilet at end of room, shower between toilet and door. Wet room, so no tray or screen in the way when shower isn't in use. But you'll have to work out a non-slippery flooring.

Where’s the soil pipe, and where is the upstairs bathroom?

We have a roller door on our half garage,you wouldn’t need to change it

Assuming this is preparing for becoming unable to do stairs in the future it's also worth thinking about where a bed might go downstairs.

Do they have any other access to the garden that avoids them having to move everything through the house? It looks like, currently, they would go through the garage (and utility)?

If taking some of the garage means they lose their access then I’d strongly recommend they don’t do it. It’ll become a PITA for them and it’ll put people off buying the house if they ever want to sell it.

Trim a slice off the living room furthest from the window, and have it windowless. Install a new door to the living room.

It might even improve the dimensions of the living room - squarer rooms tend to feel more balanced.

Fab diagrams btw.

Very few people actually put their car in their garage. They are for storage.

Also if this is the reason for the toilet and shower it would be much better if it wasn't very small, as that means no chance of anyone being able to assist them and very difficult to get them out if they fall.

What is the reason for a downstairs shower if no bedrooms downstairs. We have a downstairs shower and it is more of a pain than anything.

My utility room is also a shower room. This one looks a decent size, would it be possible to reconfigure the room to serve both purposes?
My washing machine and tumble dryer are stacked in a cupboard and the basin is large and big enough to do hand washing in.

We split our garage in two so that the model railway could be in the part nearest the house where you could put the shower room. Also, I assume the utility has water and drainage so that would be very accessible for the services to the new shower room.
We never used the garage to house the car and have shelved all three sides of the garage for storage and the the gapin the centre is just large enough for mower etc.
we have an internal door from the train room into the garage to get indoor tools etc. We kept the roll up door for heavier garden equipment from outside.

@DedododoDedadada we put in a downstairs shower room without any bedrooms downstairs because:
We wanted a downstairs toilet anyway
We are both getting older and more decrepit - even though we do not, at present, have a downstairs bedroom there may come a time when one of us can't manage upstairs. If that time comes we will use the dining room as a bedroom. If we did not have a dining room we would put a bed in the sitting room.
We have a 4 bed house and live in a university city. Even though we have a family bathroom and an en suite, it could have up to 7 people sleeping in it. Should the house be lived in by a family with adult children, a multi generational family, or be used as a house share, the extra bathroom will be needed.
We have future-proofed our whole house as much as possible, with single type flooring over the ground floor and no thresholds at the doors. This was a logical step.