Rebecca’s Beautiful Bathroom

With a blog name like Roses and Rolltops you would expect blogger Rebecca’s bathroom to a) contain a decadent rolltop bath and b) be blooming beautiful. Well you’d be right to expect these things and you lucky things are about to see that Rebecca’s bathroom delivers all this and a whole lot more.

Without further ado I’ll hand you over to Rebecca to talk us through how she approached her bathroom makeover.

The bathroom was one of the hardest rooms in the house so far to remodel. Once we removed the huge cupboard that was taking over a large chunk of the room {and cutting some of that gorgeous sash window in half}, removed all the tiles and smashed out the old bath, the space initially looked promising. But then we noticed the huge plethora of old chunky pipes running around the walls. There were so many plus a big airing tank to get rid of. We knew that we wanted a freestanding rolltop bath in here, a sink unit plus as big a shower as we could fit.

But then came the hard part, working out the layout. I remember a couple of frustrating evenings early this summer where it just didn’t seem to work. We had to keep an existing pipe route {something to do with not being able to move a waste pipe due to historic floor joists. I don’t really get the technical side of things!} and it felt like we’d hit a wall. We worked around it though drawing it out on Microsoft paint and in the end it’s worked out well. We did have to compromise on the size of sink unit and have a single sink rather than double like we’d had in our last bathroom and you may have noticed that there’s no toilet in here. It’s in the room next door, one of the quirks of an old house I guess. In the future we may add one in, we’re still working out what to do about creating a second bathroom upstairs.

I loved the idea of pretty tiles for the floor but when we discovered the original boards I decided to paint them white a la Pinterest. We used sheets of mdf tongue and groove panelling around the whole room and painted them white which helps make the room feel bigger I think. It also saved on having to replaster. The walls and floor in here are both Farrow and Ball All White. We chose white flat metro tiles for the shower but used grey grout as a contrast.

We love old quirky finds rather than buying new and whilst Lauren says it looks luxe in here, it was actually all incredibly budget. Everything in here is from eBay! We up-cycled our sink unit out of a chest of drawers {full DIY here} with a mini butler sink on top. The pink wasn’t planned, it was bought in that colour and serendipitously looked good with the grey bath I’d planned so it stayed that way! Luckily for me Ben doesn’t mind.

I love having the taps coming out of the wall for an extra feature. Our last bathroom had a lot of chrome so in this project I felt like going for antique brass. The shower enclosure, taps and sink were all new from eBay sellers. The chest of drawers, bath and radiator were from eBay second hand. The bath is plastic but we primed and painted it {in Farrow & Ball Plummett} and now you can’t actually tell that it’s not cast iron.

I didn’t want a big towel rail in here that would add bulk or look too modern so we’ve got hooks above the radiator for our Turkish towels instead. It’s an old original cast iron radiator that Ben fitted with a heating element which was then wired to a thermostat control outside the bathroom.

We decided on having plantation shutters fitted for the window, I adore the almost French vintage look they give whilst providing privacy. We went for four panels that bifold across so that we can have more light and see the garden in the daytime.

We added a shelf above the bath to break up the panelling, it was just Homebase’s basic shelf kit that we cut down and painted.

I love how this room is so bright and sunny in the day yet cosy and relaxing in the evenings. Candlelit baths may just be my favourite thing.

P.S. If you haven’t yet, you need to start following Rebecca on instagram. She has made me green with envy over the last week with her holiday snaps from the Seychelles.

{STEAL REBECCA’S STYLE}