Planning a bathroom that will grow with my family #WhyIneedaNewBath

My thoughts on Planning a bathroom that will grow with my family.

When we moved into the house we knew that we would need to do work to the bathroom, for a number of reasons:

Firstly, because there is only one- something that the surveyor was at pains to point out in the pre-purchase stages.

Secondly because there is no shower.

And thirdly because the survey said there were ‘issues’ with the bathroom in it’s current state.

I have been mourning the loss of our two large lovely bathrooms, both with shower and perfectly finished to my specifications, which annoying had to stay with the old house. I have been missing the 3 minutes of peace that the sound of rushing water pounding on your head gave me each morning before the school run in our former home.

And yet, the tub that takes 20 minutes to fill- water pressure- has grown on me this last year. I am not a bath person. Or rather I was not. As there is no alternative, I have become accustomed to wallowing in water, particularly during the winter months when it warms the very soul. I have learned to embrace the charms of a tub, to get over the loss of a book to the frothy-bubbled waves, to contemplate the ceiling whilst the children sleep.

I can only imagine the bliss that a whirlpool bath offers. I fear I would never get out, much like our children in the hot tub at our holiday house this summer. All those bubbles soothing your joints, your aches, your school-run-battered soul. I’d stay in until the water developed a layer of ice, until the dawn broke, until the children woke. I could imagine myself away to a less hurried world, the sound of rushing water, the wtarefalls, the tropical rainforests…..

Where was I?

The Year of No Shower, in addition to allowing me to fall in love with the tub, has also afforded me the time to daydream and plan what our new bathroom will look like when finished.

It needs to be a room that can grow with our growing girls, both of whom are now at school: it needs to be robust enough to take the knocks of small children, and it needs to encourage them to want to be in there, bathing, cleaning their faces and brushing their teeth. It needs to suit the teenage them as well as it suits the primary school them: to store all their toiletries, to fit them both in front of the mirror, to allow them to relax too.

It needs a scheme that can adapt: they won’t want pink tiles when they are 15. Will they? It needs to have lots of storage, be bright and light, be welcoming to visitors. But it also needs a bit of us. It needs whimsy and fun and colour.

It needs a tropical rainforest theme. It needs flamingos and bamboo, rainforest palm leaves and azure blue accessories, bamboo bath bridges and door hooks, and a large pink fish that came from the last bathroom we had. He’s called Bill, and he always makes people smile. He’d brighten up any room. He’s a bathroom essential.

It needs brightly-coloured towels in every colour of the rainbow and vibrant plush bathmats to keep our feet warm and the carpet dry. It needs a heated towel rail to warm the afore-mentioned zany towels. It may even need a bright pink loo seat. It needs a madly-patterned blind that can be closed at night to keep in warmth.

And it needs all of this on a neutral base, a way of ensuring that the bathroom grows with our family: a smart white bathtub that is good quality and will stand the test of time: double-ended so that there are no arguments over which child I am “forcing” to sit next to the tap. It needs a co-ordinated loo and sink which can replace our existing built-in ones without needing to remove units. It needs traditional-style taps, that are in keeping with the general decor and hardware already in place in our home.

It needs a solid glass shower screen that will stop water getting all over the floor but still allow light in from the narrow window. It needs white tiles, a wall of iridescent white that shimmer in any light and give the effect of a waterfall. It needs a large mirror so that two teenage girls can use it simultaneously as they ready themselves for school. It needs a few more spot lights than we have. It needs far more ideas than I could fit on one Polyvore Collection so I hope you get the idea from the picture above and the description.

Then when we are “so over” the rainforest fun, we can replace the accessories and give our bathroom the inexpensive makeover it will need, allowing us to use the money leftover to shell out for our daughters’ social lives. I am thinking that this future bathroom will be seeing a lot of life over the next few years!

This is my entry for Love Chic Living and  BathandShower.com Why I  Need a New Bath Competition. I do need a new bathroom and these are most of my plans. I have yet to break the news to DH about the colour scheme.