How much expense / hassle to switch a bathroom and bedroom

[EL8888]

We are interested in a 4 bedroom house, it has a shower room in a loft extension and a very small “family” bathroom on the 1st floor. The family bathroom is that small it has no bath and one can’t be fitted in but my fiancé is a bath lover. So lm thinking how about swapping the bathroom and the smallest bedroom round? Whichever is the smallest bedroom would be a dressing room / walk in wardrobe anyway. The current bathroom is at the front of the house, kitchen is at the back and the room l would want the bathroom is above the kitchen. Is this an excessive cost potentially or am l rightfully thinking outside the box?

How big is your budget? The soil pipe is going to be the biggest expense. Is there a bedroom at the front that you could divide into a bathroom and a dressing room? Or move the bathroom wall a bit to accommodate a bath? That would be easier to do because of access to the soil pipe.

Depending on how long you’re planning to stay there, I’d also think about house values when you reduce the number of bedrooms.

As jojo said - depends where the waste stack is.

I made the smallest bedroom in my house into a bathroom. The toilet was next door. It was fairly straightforward and I think cost around £3000 plus tiles. I also put a toilet to the front of the house in an existing but toilet free bathroom. I did not want a soil stack at the front of the house but I ran it under the bedroom next door and outside the side to join costing drainage. As long as the fall is enough this will work. I can't remember the cost. The bedroom was so small and the balance of bedrooms to bathrooms (five beds, one bath originally, now four beds two bathrooms) meant there was no loss in value.

@JoJoSM2 budget is TBC. We are still trying to sell our current place. The house we are interested in is over priced, it started off at £400k and l sniggered (the prices are slipping here). It’s now on for £375k which is still ambitious round here at the moment, for a 4 bedroom house with no bath. We could got to £380k for a dream house with no work needed so there is flex still as it’s been on for a few months now.

Waste stack is at the front. Rather than the back.

We would not be reducing bedrooms, we would be swapping the bedroom and bathroom. Both are small but bathroom is too small for a bath. I think 3 doubles and a single versus 3 doubles plus a slightly smaller single works stack up ok

Surely If it’s not big enough for a bath it isn’t big enough for a bed?

@AppleKatie neither are really. But the swap around would mean we would make it a dressing room

I think where the soil pipe is, is the key to how much it will cost.
It isn’t about losing a bedroom to gain a bathroom.

If the soil pipe is at the front of your house and you want it at the back you have to dig a new soil pipe and to put it bluntly it needs to be at such an angle as to have your shit fall along the sewer pipe and into the sewer pipe in the road.

Are you terraced, semi or detached because it could mean digging under the ground floor to lay the pipe.

The whole job could be potentially very messy

Is there a way of moving the wall/s of the bathroom so you can take a few inches/feet from the neighbouring bedroom/s and extend the bathroom that way. Or put in a bath elsewhere.
Maybe in the loft with the aid of a dorma window if head height is the problem. You might have to strength the beams as well.

@Oliversmumsarmy it’s end terrace so like semi detached. Good point about the angle

We can’t move walls as it’s a long thin house already. There is a dorma window but the foot print doesn’t work. Especially with 6’3 15 stone fiancé fitting in a bath

Would you still be able to fit a bed in the new bedroom
?

@Porridgeoat yep. But a bed is tight is either room really

Is it possible to kept the bathroom where it is and just move a wall and change the layout to get a small bath in?

Thinking out of the box, is the master big enough for a bath in the room like this not that I would fancy it personally but if is is mainly just for him, and I can see the benefits of then being in the room you get change in.

If the new ‘bedroom’ wouldn’t fit a bed, whilst it’s fine for your purposes and a dressing room sounds lovely I would have thought you would be devaluing the house.

Can you share a link or screenshot the floor plan? We've moved the soil rack because of an extension, so it can be done, but maybe there's a better fix you just haven't thought of yet?