How do I de-grim my downstairs loo?

[everdene]

DH and I bought our first home, which was a doer-upper.

The downstairs loo is HORRIBLE. It's off the kitchen and is an ex-outside loo.

It is tiny (no room for a sink) and the cistern is a different colour to the pedestal. There is a soil pipe running down the side of it and the light is a bare bulb at an odd angle. It also has a damp patch and had a wasp infestation.

Where do I start?! No real budget but could spend a couple of hundred quid.

Is the damp going to be easy to treat? Id do that firstly. Secondly can you hang a pendant light fitting? Mirrors are your friend in a tiny room

That's a great idea unsure - I was wondering whether mirrored Metro tiles would look good or like a nightclub..!

I got a piece of mirror cut to size for an alcove on my downstairs loo - it's about 1.5m x 75cm and was much less than I was expecting, under £10 iirc - although it was about 6 years ago. Might be worth investigating your local glass merchant as it would probably be much cheaper than tiles.

Use your budget to resolve the damp / wasp problems - a lovely bathroom will still be grim if damp and waspy

Then paint it a great colour (something like yellow or orange, depending on the rest of the decor in your house). A large mirror (look on eBay, Freecycle etc) will make it lighter.

Is the lightbulb sticking out from the wall or the ceiling?

You can use plasticote spray on a plastic cistern if you mask everything off well, ventilate the room and are careful to build up in very thin layers, letting them dry completely in between. Take the lid off and do it separately in the garden.

Oh, and in due course, think about the flooring: patterned tiles work well to give an illusion of space, even more so if they are the same in the space outside the loo

I would spruce it up cheaply and fix the damp issue, Later when funds allow. there exists tiny sinks, tiny corner sinks and even loos with a sink in the cistern!