bathroom reveal

Well I thought the day would never come, but I am finally at the stage of writing my “REVEAL” posts!

5 years after buying our house, 2 years after getting the plans approved, 10 months after starting the renovation process and 8 months after building began, we have finally moved in! And it is as beautiful as I hoped it would be. I can’t wait to bring you more posts in the coming months, showing you all the final pictures, and also explaining how we got there.

But to kick it all off, I thought I would share our lovely downstairs bathroom with you. Since this is already a long post, I will write another post sharing all the exact fittings I used, where I bought them and how much I paid for them.

In anticipation of my first room-reveal photo shoot (and to celebrate the fact that we survived a renovation), I took myself off to Manchester Warehouse and picked up some gorgeous new towels! You will spy them in several of the pics – they add the perfect finishing touch.

So, without further ado, the bathroom reveal!

Here is our wall-hung vanity, with soft-close draws. We bought the cabinet without a top, and sourced our own timber benchtop and sink. The benchtop is made from solid red-gum. Would you believe Matt’s parents had a long piece of red-gum in their garage and wanted to get rid of it!? So we took it to a cabinet maker and he cut it in half, joined it and finished it for us.

Also, the mirror will eventually be mounted on the wall a little higher up. A job for another day.

I went with this above counter basin for two reasons. Firstly, I just luuuuurve the look of it, and secondly, when you have a timber bench top it is not a great idea to cut a recessed sink into it, as water can spill down the sides and rot the timber.

Since this is quite a narrow vanity I asked the plumber to install the mixer tap at the back corner of the sink, rather than behind it. This allowed for more bench space in front of the basin.

In the photo you can see the gloss white, timber french window. Having a large window lets a whole lotta light into the bathroom. Though we still haven’t quite figured out what kind of window covering we want yet – plantation shutters, folding shutters, venetion blinds? Still deciding. Whatever we go with, we will plant some tall plants outside to cover the neighbours brick wall!

We went with frameless shower screens in both this bathroom and the ensuite. While they look beautiful, there is a price to pay – you will always have a wet bath mat at the end of your shower! This shower screen actually folds back (as you can see in the picture), something I insisted on as it makes bath time with a baby a lot easier.

Our bath-tub! It’s a fairly small tub, coming in at 1525mm long, but this is okay as it will essentially be used for bathing kids anyway. I am thrilled with the white subway tiles we used for the front of the bath and back wall. It’s a throw back to our time living in New York.

The beautiful towels you see here are from Manchester Warehouse. I chose the Chinese Key bath mat and hand towel in white and teal. Aren’t they preeeety!

The mixer tap I used for the basin was a cheapy, so I was able to splurge on the bath and shower taps. These beauties were rather expensive, they are directly opposite the bathroom door so they are the first thing you see as you walk in so I thought it was better to spend the money on these ones, rather than the basin tap.

I had too much fun styling my pretty white and teal hand-towels for this shoot – look at me and my bad self, rolling them up just like they do in the resorts.

If you look carefully, you can see the large gloss white tiles on the right hand wall, and the smaller subway tiles on the back wall. I love that the change in tile is quite subtle but still adds a point of difference to the room.

Heated towel rails are definitely an added expense that aren’t entirely necessary. But can I just tell you, in winter they are just so wonderful! This was one of those things we decided to spend the money on as an investment for re-sale (eventually). It is considered a luxury item, so when selling the house we will include it in the ‘features’ section.

Since the bathroom is very white, I chose these contrasting Chinese Key towels in graphite, don’t they look fab against the white of the tiles?

I had often bought towels and sheets online from Manchester Warehouse, but I had never actually been into the store. I finally went last week – it’s in Koograh, about 5 minutes from the airport. I showed the staff photos of my bathroom and they helped me pick colours and patterns that would compliment it. They also showed me how to style bath towels, hand towels and bathmats for my shoot. I’ll do a whole blog about that another time.

The shower taps match the bath taps, so were also on the expensive side. Matt is 8 inches taller than me, so choosing shower heads was honestly one of the most stressful parts of this whole reno! It’s always the little things that get you.

We needed a shower head that could be adjusted in height to suit us both, which gave us very little choice in the market. I must have gone to 8 different stores and looked online for days on end! Most of the adjustable ones were hideously ugly. This one was the only one we found that combined functionality with style, plus it had beautiful taps to go with it.

The loo! Originally we wanted to hide the cistern in the wall, but that meant we would lose some of the width of our bathroom as the wall would need to be widened. We already had a small bath, so decided we didn’t want to sacrifice any more space. This one has a soft close lid and a modern stream-line shaped bowl. I mean look, it’s a loo. And for a loo, it’s fine with me!