Would I be mad to remove the bathroom?

[PickledElectricity]

I have fallen in love with a house that needs absolutely everything doing to it, in a conservation area.

It used to be a 4 bed but they turned a bedroom into a bathroom and it is absolutely enormous for what it is.

I have 2 DC and would like a third in 2-3 years' time so ideally need 4 bedrooms. 4 bedroom houses here are outside of my budget currently.

Would I be mad to remove the bathroom (maybe leave a small shower room) and put one in downstairs instead?

Floor plan attached.

Those bedrooms are TINY! Keep looking.

I’d go for it. Nice house with potential, reasonable price, good area. Anecdotally I also think Sutton has decent schools?

What I would do though would be to keep the upstairs 3 beds and a bath- agree I would move the bath to the smaller bedroom. 2 small kids could easily share one of those rooms for quite a long time. My kids barely spend any time in their rooms too so it would be mad to lose a great house over this.

What I would eventually do though would be to do a good rear extension to create 2 reception rooms and a guest suite with en suite (which could also function as a downstairs loo) and then also create a large family room. Looking at a few other houses there is precedent for rear extensions and the plot looks like it could accommodate it. Then eventually either you or the oldest child could use the downstairs bedroom and/ or it could become a study. Something like the below.

There were 10 of us in a 2 bathroom house. This NEED for a bedroom and bathroom each speaks of tiny Barrett houses on 3 storeys..

It looks like the bathroom was originally the smallest bedroom.

Future potential buyers won't want a downstairs bathroom if they can get one upstairs. Our best thing about moving from a walk-in Victorian terrace with two children was the upstairs bathroom and how close it was to the bedrooms. We did view an old house with the bathroom still downstairs and it seemed a very long way to get to it, as the house was quite big. We didn't buy it, for reasons including that one.

I would be very reluctant to buy a house that did not have an actual bath, or at a push, room to install one easily.

A downstairs bathroom wouldn't bother me as long as there was a loo upstairs.

No loo upstairs - would be very off-putting. I've lived in a house with a downstairs bathroom only, and I remember when I had a bad bout of flu, having to literally crawl up and down the stairs to go to the toilet.

I just love anything that needs to be brought back to live to be honest, love the idea of ripping it all out which is why I like ones that you have to do that with

I'm trying not to think about future buyers because I want to stay in my next house for 15-20+ years - basically until the children are out of school.

We offered on a house where we planned to do this but got gazumped just days later so never did.

The extra bedroom would add value but the sub par bathroom per bedroom set up would reduce value so it really would equal out to remaining about the same however as your doing it to live their not sell it needs to match YOUR requirements.

The one we looked at had a 'bedroom' sized disabled adapted bathroom with lift but still had an old school separate WC. We would have turned 80% of the bathroom into a bedroom by moving the toilet wall about 80cm across to create a smaller bathroom/shower room of 170cm x 150cm and a small box type bedroom of just over 6m.

In an ideal world if doing this you would also look to add at least a small downstairs WC as a lot of buyers want at least 2 toilets in a 4 bed house. Plenty of people raise kids in houses with just showers, its really not a deal breaker but you can also get small baths (for some reason ours that came with the house is 10cm smaller than standard even though their is plenty of room in the bathroom for 'standard' size).

The house we ended up getting instead is a 4 bed with a decent sized family bathroom but we added a 2nd small shower room anyway (smaller than the one we designed for the previous house) and honestly I only use the small shower room anyway.

You can't talk for all 'potential buyers' though.

I have had downstairs bathrooms over half my life and by far prefer it. I spent a lot of money to ADD a downstairs bathroom because I don't like traipsing up and down all day long just to pee when I work, relax and spend family time downstairs.

I also shower at night and my DH does first thing in the morning and we don't want to do it right next to the kids bedrooms and wake them. In our first family home when my oldest where little we couldn't even flush the toilet at night without waking him. Having lived in and experienced both (and living in a standard small family home not a mansion where the bathroom is in its own wing away from everyone) having upstairs is an utterly stupid design for a family really.

Putting a bed that's 200cm ish long in a room that's only 236 wide is going to be tight.

That's exactly what I was going to suggest, we did something similar years ago when bought a house that they had put a bathroom into a huge bedroom, I kid you not it was at least 15' square with the toilet directly opposite a huge sash window with clear glass in it😳 we took a small slice off it and created a shower room. We did however have space to add an ensuite to the master though in what was a walk in wardrobe which had a bath for younger children but you could always do that downstairs if you plan an extension.

I'd suggest the reason there is a person in the photos is that he can't move independently from the range of equipment including a profiling bed that is downstairs. I'd also recommend you check it is fully cleared before you exchange if you go ahead, latest purchase by my family member came complete with piles of junk (even though vacant possession is in the contracts there's not a lot you can do when you move in and find loads of stuff left behind🙄).

This sounds very very expensive. If you have the money to di it why not put it towards a more suitable home?

Because I don't have the money right now. These changes would take place over 5+ years.