A new bathroom was the top priority for this young family in Christchurch, who’d moved into the house within the last year. 2018 will be all about the living room, library, hallway and bedrooms, but whilst they were away on holiday late last summer we got the most destructive and messy bits of the renovation complete.
We’ve created an overall scheme for the house which is very much about enhacing the traditional charm and grandeur, with a statement wallpapers, around a flowing theme of blue, grey and green. (Watch this space to see the rest of the house take shape).Â
For the bathroom we presented a scheme based around a gorgeous encaustic style floor tile from Ca ‘Pietra. Encaustic tiles are a top-quality, often hand-made product with a price-tag to match, but this collection from Ca Pietra looks amazingly like the real thing, for a more comfortable price.
This being the family bathroom, we needed both a shower and a bath, and the homeowners were really keen to go for a traditional-style roll-top bath with claw feet. Enter stage left, the Burlington Hampton bath which is perfect for the typical compact bathroom as it comes in two sizes and is fitted into the corner of the room, whilst still looking like a roll top fron the end and the front side. Genius! Until a few years ago, you’d have been restricted to a very costly bespoke bath, or a roll-top with a shower curtain on a round pole above the bath. This option allowed us to have a beautiful glass and chrome door which works perfectly for the space.
The exosed shower head and valve set from Bathstore.com (Bensham) sets off the crisp white and grey gloss metro tiles beautifully and we made sure any other pipework on show was dressed in chrome. The bathroom fittings all have a traditional Victorian feel, and we enhanced the lighting and architectural features of the room. Our carpenter/tiler/master of most trades, Martin, installed deep decorative coving around the ceiling, this has the effect of lowering the ceiling as it felt a bit high for the area of the room. He also fitted architrave to make more of the large windown and a ceiling rose. This is from an amazing product by Orac Decor, a very lightweight polymer which is easy to install, flexible, and has none of the cost implications of decorative plaster. Once painted it looks completely original. The great thing about stripping everything out of a room and starting again is that you can really plan the best lighting, knowing that the cabling can all be concealed in the chases in the wall. We added primsatic style wall lights and a stunning glass pendant (all bathroom rated, of course!) which can be used independently, so mood light for relaxing in the bath with a glass of wine, or rushing around in the morning brushing children’s teeth!
