Solving bathroom floorplan

[SwedeInLeeds]

Looking at making an offer on this:
www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/87316223#/

We have been struggling to find a 'large' house in a location with good school and good commute to the university. This seems to fit the bill quite well!

Floorplan can be seen here:
www.zoopla.co.uk/property/133-carr-manor-road/leeds/ls17-5ab/13642004/

Main drawback I think is the family bathroom, which is tiny.
Any ideas on how this could be improved?

One option would be to change the landing into a bathroom.
maybe even leave the loo in the small family bathroom and make a nice shower/tub in the landing. Would this be very difficult in terms of plumbing?

The garden is also a bit small but we could probably deal with it, it looked larger in person. Any idea why it might be raised like that? Would lowering it be a possibility?

Thanks for your thoughts!

I think the bathroom looks fine. You can leave the door open to bath kids if you need more space and if you redo the bathroom you can look to put in some clever storage. Presume you will have master bathroom so only kids need to use it.

I’d imagine the easiest thing would be to turn the smallest bedroom into a bathroom.

If you need all the bedrooms, then moving the stairs slightly, and turning the landing into a bathroom doesn’t seem like an unreasonable prospect.

Plumbing isn’t difficult, it’s only ever the toilet waste pipe that needs thinking about

I'd move the bath along the wall, then you'd be able to open the door fully. Keep the landing as a study area.

Move the door to where the towel rail is and have the bath lengthways along the stair wall? You'll need to re-plumb the heating and the bath. But it all looks newly done and therefore an expensive fix (unless you can still get exactly those tiles). Trying living with it for a while before you decide. But don't give up that study space on the landing, that's quite useful.

I wouldn't do anything with it. You've got a downstairs loo and an en suite and realistically how many people do you have in the bathroom at once? If you've got children who are still young enough to need bathing there should be room to kneel on the floor at the side of the bath, and that need will be a short term one as they get older and more independent.

Or.....the utility room and downstairs loo looks to be bigger than the upstairs bathroom (I can't read the dimensions). You could block up the utility room door and then knock through the two rooms to create a combined bathroom / utility.

You wont be able to put a bathroom where the front landing bit is as the plumbing and drainage couldn't be accommodated there.

On the ground floor sacrifice the utility room to be an additional bathroom/shower room so you have two family bathrooms.

Plumbing connections are already there and it’s unlikely to be a supporting wall that divides them.

You might have difficulty running pipes from the upstairs landing area to connect to the existing bathroom as you’ve have the stairwell void to negotiate. So you’d hackberry a lot of bends or you’d need to run pipes outside.

Add another bathroom to that size house will increase the value I’d think/

Not sure I'd bother given there's a nice shower room in the upstairs ensuite.

But, could you knock the utility room/downstairs loo together to make a big downstairs family bathroom?

Cross post!

You could add another shower/ bathroom on the landing as it's on an outside wall so a new soil pipe could be added to the outside on the side wall.
However that would make the stairs quite dark.
Whatever you did I think it would be a compromise and may not be worth it it terms of cost / benefit.
If you kept the bathroom as it was and moved the door to the centre and made it a sliding door, you could rotate the Bath 90degrees, shift the toilet down and move the basin to opposite the door which may feel nicer to use. It would be a complete refit of the bathroom but may give you what you want.

Create a small bedroom on the front landing (looks boxroom sized). Make that bed 4. Move bathroom into existing bed4.

Change current bathroom into office room or a walk in wardrobe for the user of the new bed 4.

@wonkylegs

You could add another shower/ bathroom on the landing as it's on an outside wall so a new soil pipe could be added to the outside on the side wall. However that would make the stairs quite dark. Whatever you did I think it would be a compromise and may not be worth it it terms of cost / benefit. If you kept the bathroom as it was and moved the door to the centre and made it a sliding door, you could rotate the Bath 90degrees, shift the toilet down and move the basin to opposite the door which may feel nicer to use. It would be a complete refit of the bathroom but may give you what you want.

Room is only 1.3m wide - far too short for a bath which is normally 1.8m.

I am intrigued by the idea to remove the utility.
Always lived in flats so do not really know how people use these in houses.

I thought having a family bathroom on the bottom floor would be a bit strange as you'd have to run down the stairs to shower/bath then run upstairs to get dressed. Also would most people not value having the utility room downstairs?

I hear your points about not sacrificing the landing space.
Also would not want to turn any of the bedrooms into a bathroom, but maybe with the ensuite upstairs the current layout would still be fine for us. Just wanted to hear if there was something obvious people would do.

Any comments on the garden?

How many people are going to be living in it.....if it's 2 adults in the master bedroom with ensuite and 2 children then I would think that a family bathroom and downstairs loo would be more than sufficient. If you've got 5 kids then you might need another bath or shower, in which case adapt the utility room space.
I think a lot of utility rooms are just used for storage and to keep the washer / dryer out of the kitchen, particularly when you've got a big open plan kitchen / diner / living room. The downside of the one in this house is that it doesn't have a window or door to outside so it probably isn't great for hanging up washing to dry or taking shoes on/off on the way to/from the garden. Hence why I would be tempted to merge it with the bathroom - it's quite common in other countries to have the washing machine in the bathroom.
I'd live in it before deciding what you do.

@titchy average is 1700 but you can get compact baths at 1300 they tend to be deeper or wider and can be quite nice, ( some have a seat )but it's a conscious choice that I get some people would hate.
I suppose it depends on why you want a bath, is it for small kids, with a shower above for adults or stretching out and relaxing.
Our bath is almost completely because of the small kids and adults use the shower.

The bathroom would be the least of my worries! The decor is extreme - does Morticia or a family of vampires live there!! I have never seen so much monochrome in one property.

@percheron67

The bathroom would be the least of my worries! The decor is extreme - does Morticia or a family of vampires live there!! I have never seen so much monochrome in one property.

Now now , decor can always be changed. We did have a similar reaction to be fair.

It's only us at the moment but aiming for 2 kids at some point. For the bathtub I want an adult one for myself so couldn't reduce it. But maybe it's fine, if we end up getting it like people say can just see how we like it as we live there and if we need a bigger bathroom we could always put a shower/tub in the landing.

I wouldn't change the bathroom at all. It's small, but it is also big enough for everything you need. I would be more concerned about losing the utility room. Unless there is anything immediately obvious that you can change I would suggest living in it for a year or two first. Good luck if you decide to pursue it

Keep the utility. We are lucky enough to have one in our flat. I'd never move to a utility-less house now.

I'd only looked at the floor plan to now, but just took a look at the pics and that bathroom is perfectly fine.

if you want to lower the garden, you will have to dig out about 10 skips full of earth and then build a new retaining wall. that will be LOT of work and expense without adding any value to your property. your lower garden might get less sun (more shade from house / neighbouring walls) and so plants will grow less.

So I'd strongly recommend keeping the height of the garden roughly as it is. you can still put in different plants or do other things depending on what kind of garden you want.

Is there access to the garden around the side of the house? Or does everything have to go through the house?

If I were to knock through into the utility, I would keep the washer/drier in there. It's quite the norm in some other countries (i.e. Australia) to have either a seperate laundry or a laundry/bathroom - and thought of as weird to have them in the kitchen! I actually got quite used to it.

It looks like you could put the bathroom at the front. Presumably the toilet waste drain is on that outside wall. So as long as the WC is placed on that wall the drains could connect. It’s WC drainage that usually the difficult bit.

Downstairs bathrooms are quirky! Nowhere near bedrooms is the main and obvious issue. Most of us sleep, wake up and want a shower. We want it handy. Not in another part of the house.

I do think a tiny small bathroom serving 3 bedrooms isn’t great. I think I would be quite keen to lose the tiny bedroom and make it an en suite to the adjacent bedroom. You would need to slightly shuffle a wall around but you could do it I think. Putting the bathrooms next to each other is efficient. Then use the landing by the window for a study.

Keep the utility. Buy lots of paint and redecorate!