How would you add a bathroom to this floor plan?

[Lazerquest]

My partner and I are in the process of buying a new house (great timing I know with Brexit round the corner!).

The house is perfect, it is a period property with large rooms and a lot of downstairs living space - but it only has one bathroom and a downstairs toilet. At the moment this is fine as there is just the two of us, but with time we will have children and one bathroom seems a stretch for a 4 bedroom house.

How would you add another bath/shower room in this situation?

You could add an ensuite in the largest bedroom, or knock your kitchen and dining room through, create an open plan kitchen diner and expand the existing ground floor loo into a downstairs bathroom.

Both options should be relatively straightforward as they are near your existing soilpipe.

Change the cupboard between the two back bedrooms into a bathroom that can be accessed by the two bedrooms, jack and Jill bathroom I think it's called?

Add an ensuite to the largest bedroom with the bay window somewhere on the wall that backs onto the existing bathroom. Or add a shower to the downstairs loo if there is space.

I’m rubbish at this sort of thing but can see two fairly easy ways.

1. Utility room to become downstairs shower and toilet (I’d probably also knock though to give a large kitchen diner).

2. En-suite at bathroom side of master bedroom - all the plumbing should be fairly easy as it’s next to the bathroom.

I agree with making the largest an ensuite. Also careful with a jack and Jill room, as can be seen as quite dated and adds lower value than adding a 'proper' room

Definitely an ensuite that backs onto existing bathroom. I've done my own property conversions.

Lovely sized bedrooms. I'd keep them as that as I love big bedrooms.
I think a shower tray would fit in the downstairs loo or you could use the space in the utility room for another shower.

Put an en suite in the biggest bedroom, right next to where the bathroom is.

Our original thought as many have said was to add an en-suite to the master bedroom.

The only issue is the bedroom has cornicing on the ceiling. Would this be easy enough to remove and replace so it goes around the new en-suite? Or would you leave it so the cornice ends where the en-suite starts?!

Also if we picked this option would you put the en-suite door on the short wall adjacent to the door to enter the bedroom or on the long wall? If the door was on the long wall we would have less options as to where to put the bed.

Cornicing easy enough to remove, have door next to main door.

Add en-suite to main bedroom. Door on short wall next to door to bedroom - it might have to open out but at least that means you’ll keep the bathroom door closed.
I would not lose the utility downstairs to turn into a bathroom - no one wants to traipse downstairs to use a shower. Also my big regret in my large house is not having a separate utility!

What’s that cupboard and blacked-out bit between the two bedrooms at the base of the floor plan? Does it provide any scope for a shower room with external window? I’m not a huge fan of wet rooms but it looks like a wet room would work there.

I wouldn’t bother putting a shower anywhere downstairs, that would be a complete waste and a faff to use.

An en-suite in one of the bedrooms would be the next best thing.

Easiest option would be en-suite to the biggest bedroom. Long term would changing the utility room to a 2 storey extension be an idea. You could put a large en-suite or possibly more at the top. Without looking at the rooms it’s hard to say which one you would want as master given views/ noise from roads etc.

The cornice is a question for @pigletjohn but I imagine it would be quite easy to do.

Can you do a loft conversion and have a master suite up there? It would be a shame to make the bedrooms smaller by adding an en-suite.

I bet your house looks lovely from outside.

Assuming it'd be a few years before you need 4 bedrooms what I'd be tempted to do is create a door between master and bed 4 and put a bathroom there. The other 1/2 make into a walk in wardrobe. You may need an external waste pipe - our council allowed planning for this and we're in a Conservation area

Downside is obviously you lose a room but we did similar. Went from 5 bed 1 bath upstairs to 4 bed 2 bath and walk in wardrobe. Though that hasn't impacted us as we have 3 children.

Is the kitchen new? I'd also lose the wc at the front door to square off the kitchen. Pop a wc and shower in your utility. If you ever have a dog, a shower downstairs is really useful.

Whatever about moving the loo, a shower in the utility seems completely impractical to me. The person taking the shower wound have to come downstairs and walk through the kitchen and the dining room before taking a shower?

And it doesn’t look like there’s any exit from the utility to the exterior, so you’d have to parade a dog that is filthy enough to need a shower through the kitchen and dining room also? Doesn’t sound like a useful addition to your home at all.

The blacked out bit between the two bedrooms is another cupboard accessed from one of the bedrooms with a window in it. These two cupboards are the width of a door so we ruled it out as a shower room as thought it would be too narrow. Now I’m thinking we could maybe take some space from one of the two back bedrooms to make the cupboards a bit wider and fit in a shower room. Then it could have direct access from the hallway which is more versatile than an en-suite. This would need a new waste pipe on the outside wall so not sure how feasible it would be.

Option 2 will be a shower room off the utility. Apparently there used to be an old outside toilet off the back of the utility so that might be an option for drainage. Thanks everyone for your help!

I would do an en-suite in the corner of the master (adjoining the existing bathroom).

I was just going to suggest a corner en suite on main bedroom, we have one and it takes up no space, its fantastic. (Corner shower with tiny sink and toilet)

If you can sort the waste pipe issue, and if it still allows you open the bedroom doors in a reasonable way, converting the cupboard area sounds ideal. You won’t lose any significant bedroom space, and the bedrooms will still remain without any hugely awkward corners, and the shower room will be accessible to all bedrooms.

Cheapest would be to turn the utility into a utility/shower room. Always useful downstairs, especially with kids, dogs or other mucky creatures.

We have a 5 bedroom house (very small bedrooms!) and a bathroom and WC and don't have any issues yet with 4 of us in the house (Will teenage years be different?) I would leave it as is and change if you need to down the years

Downstairs shower is fantastic if you are can outdoorsy sort of family. Mucky kids, sporting teens, trail running DH, straight in the downstairs shower. Easy to wash your dog too.