Extending the bathroom... Or not.

[iskra]

We are doing up a house with a small bathroom in bad nick. Looks like we are going to have to replace it (argh). It is small, but fits a bath, toilet & basin in with a bathmat sized bit of floor. However we could extend it out into the bedroom... The bedroom next to it is a v small double room. We were planning on using it as a guest room - there are 4 bedrooms & a study, 2 children (one in utero!), so we would be fine without it... But I'm not keen on losing the room. Does it reduce or increase value to have a bigger bathroom & smaller bedroom (of 4)? What space saving tricks are there for small bathrooms?

It may not increase value for resale but would it increase value in how you used the house? How often do you use a guest bedroom compared with how often you use a bathroom? Bigger bathroom likely to be useful with 2 children?
Would you be able to have a separate shower and a nice big bath?
We are also renovating but with a view to living in the house rather than selling. We have the tiniest bathroom (1.7x1.7 with a sloping roof) and are extending into the next bedroom making it a single. It still won't make the bathroom anything like a good size and no room for separate shower but it will feel less claustrophobic.

Is there any way you could make two bathrooms instead of just one? Could you have a very small bathroom with a square stand in-shower (no bathtub), toilet and sink plus the original bathroom? Two bathrooms make a house very liveable even if one is tiny.

we have a tiny bathroom (5' by 5'3 I think) and managed to fit a shower bath plus sink and bog in it. It's fine so far (actually it's LOVELY so far, after a week without a bathroom!), but we only got it fitted 2 weeks ago! We went with Homebase for the fitting (which I'm in two minds about recommending - they weren't exactly bad, but they were the first builders we've experienced, so we don't know how they compare to the norm!) and the bath we got is a nice size despite being a 1.5 metre length one.