This article shows how we helped our customer in Kippax with their awkwardly shaped downstairs shower room
Not all rooms are square!
Sometimes an awkward room shape does not mean that you cannot have a bathroom or shower room.
It just means that you probably have to be a bit more creative in how you use the space.
In this instance, a customer came to us with an awkward small space that they wanted to turn into a downstairs shower room.
The room was situated off the kitchen on the ground floor and tapered massively from one end to the other as you can see above.
No walls were parallel or square to one another, and this made adding a traditional shower enclosure very difficult as all 4 sided ‘off the peg’ shower trays are either rectangular or square, and not made in parallelogram shapes!
How we helped our customer
We worked with our customer to develop a plan:
This plan would accomplish the following:
- Add a much needed shower space to a previously unused room by converting it into a wetroom, meaning that there would be no shower tray – merely a drain in the tiled floor of the shower area
- Add a radiator, toilet & basin to the space without making the room feel too cramped.
- Insulate the new shower room from the cold garage beyond it to ensure that occupants were kept warm whilst showering.
- Add lighting and ventilation to make the space functional and compliant with all relevant building regulations.
- Allow for a level access floor with no step up / down into the room AND no step up into the shower area.
- Creation of a relatively spacious showering area contained with a fixed glass panel and adjustable flipper panel (that allowed easy access into the shower area but contained the spray from the shower head when showering.)
- Produce a gently sloping floor that ensured that all water flowed nicely into the linear drain that we situated along the far end of the showering space.
PS For those of you who are interested, we achieved this by using these Marmox sloping tile backer boards:
Installation
After helping our customer to envisage and design the space (and confirming that the intended design was achievable within budgetary and building constraints) we installed the wetroom from start to finish.
This involved the application and project management of a few overlapping trades as the work schedule
could be split down into the following areas:
- General building work (concreting the floor & insulating some walls)
- Joinery (studwork to the wall & ceiling including making an alcove for the shower)
- Electrical work (for the underfloor heating, lighting, fan & LED mirror unit)
- Plumbing (installing the suite)
- Tiling (preparing the walls & floor, and subsequently tiling)
- Plastering (the ceiling)
- Painting (the ceiling)
A turnkey solution
Turnkey suppliers like us do everything from start to finish and are effectively a one stop shop for bathroom, en suite & wet room installations.
This means there’s no calling round multiple plumbers, tilers, electricians, plasterers & joiners, taking time off work and waiting for them all to show up (if they do!), waiting for their quotes (if they choose to send them) before selecting the team you want to use, planning the project, ordering all the materials and booking all these guys in to do the work (to fit in with their schedules), hoping all the while that
they’re all available in the same timeframe so work doesn’t drag on for months!
Turnkey suppliers dedicated (multi trade) teams allow the work to be done in a more condensed timeframe, which limits the amount of disruption that inevitably occurs when work is carried out.
Turnkey suppliers also project manage installations like this so that you don’t have to, and this means that projects are more likely to be completed on time and on budget.
Also, it will save you a lot of stress and this is not to be undersold!
Lastly, using a turnkey supplier also retains liability in one place, and this is very important as building related squabbles are very common – something goes wrong and the tiler blames the plumber, the plumber blames the joiner and everyone walks off site and leaves you in the lurch with water coming though your ceiling.
Not a good place to be, and unfortunately a far too common occurrence.
Recommendation
When combined with the other reasons cited above, I’d always recommend a specialist bathroom installer (and not just a plumber with a few other trades tacked on), particularly on a tricky job like this one.
By doing jobs like this to a high standard we were recently awarded a Best of Houzz Service award for the 2nd year running and a 5 star review from our customer:
“My wife and I employed UK Bathroom Guru to install a ground floor wet room in an unusual shaped floor plan. Tradesmen Jay and Seth have done an excellent job with a high-quality finish. Would highly recommend to others.”
If you have a similar project in mind feel free to get in touch to discuss.
Chris