Old Stone House

The ‘master’ bathroom in the house is a 5′x6′ closet above the stairs on the front of the house. While small, the original bathroom was fairly functional, and severed its purpose well, and had the added bonus of having been installed in an inconspicuous space.

We’ve toured several other peoples houses and the bathrooms (which are always an afterthought in an old house) are sometimes integrated well, as in our case, or not so well (cutting a bedroom in half etc.). Our bathroom had been installed poorly, and was quite frankly, ugly. As well, it had no heating, and most of the plumbing had been run across the ceiling in the downstairs entranceway creating quite an eyesore.

The tub/toilet/sink was almond colour, and all of the fixtures were so heavily caked with lime/rust deposits they were impossible to clean. The shower itself had a glass surround covered with a heavy build-up of soap scum, and the wall of the shower were 6” tiles glued on top of regular drywall – they were consequently falling away from the wall and the drywall was soaking wet. Rolled flooring and wallpaper finished the ensemble.

Ideally, everything was to go. Our only issue was trying to come up with a better alternative to what was already there. The challenges would include finding fixtures that fit in the small space, especially the sink – which sits in the doorway, as well as looking into what options we had in terms of tubs.