Bedroom v Bathroom

iguana

I know losing a bedroom will generally devalue a property. But if the property has a small 3rd bedroom 6ftx9ft, and a really tiny bathroom. (4ftx4ft at its largest point, with only a bath and sink, the toilet is in a tiny annex off the kitchen.) Would turning both those rooms into one really impressive bathroom really be a big mistake?

blahblah06

Defo.. Why not go half half?

RuggieBear

probably....

houses are marketed by their no of bedrooms.

Andrew Duffy

Is this a period house, where the original upper return bedroom was turned into a useless bedroom and a useless bathroom? The advice I got from an estate agent was that if you intend doing a high-quality job then you should seek to balance the number of bedrooms, bathrooms and reception rooms; this makes the optimum layout for one of those houses interconnected living-dining room on the ground floor, galley kitchen on the ground floor return, bathroom above it and two bedrooms upstairs. You might be able to fit a guest WC under the stairs; if not you could consider keeping the one that they all have off the kitchen but I'd be inclined to use the space to make the kitchen bigger.
You can also investigate an attic conversion to get back your bedroom; the returning layout of the stairs usually makes it quite straighforward to put a stairs up and you should get permission for a dormer window to the rear. To be legally classified as habitable space, I think a room must have at least fifty percent of its ceiling above 7 feet high - Victor on this board is a surveyor and should be able to clarify this.

muffler

Andrew Duffy wrote:

I think a room must have at least fifty percent of its ceiling above 7 feet high - Victor on this board is a surveyor and should be able to clarify this.

Its 8 feet (2.40 metres) for 50% of the floor area. I think you can go 7 ft. (2.10m) below structural timbers but I am open to correction on this.

John Player

and here we have the bathroom slash kitchen

muffler

John Player wrote:

and here we have the bathroom slash kitchen

Nice one

MorningStar

iguana wrote:

I know losing a bedroom will generally devalue a property. But if the property has a small 3rd bedroom 6ftx9ft, and a really tiny bathroom. (4ftx4ft at its largest point, with only a bath and sink, the toilet is in a tiny annex off the kitchen.) Would turning both those rooms into one really impressive bathroom really be a big mistake?

Do you have one of the ex-corpo houses? We had one of these originally and managed to put in a bathroom and keep the bedroom. We also did this with my grans house and put in a diasabled bathroom. The front bedroom has enough room to fit in a shower. We ended up with a nicer landing upstairs, bigger kitchen and a bathroom upstairs.
There was not enough room for a bath and it is not a huge bathroom but feels roomier than the original one. It can be done with a terrace house using a Saniflow system but is best with end of terrace. You do lose storage in the bedroom but we used the 3rd bedroom as extra storage but had planned on using the attic space with a bit of work.
Check with estate agents and they reckoned having the bathroom and 3 rooms upstairs we added €20-25k onto the house compared with a two bed version. The work cost €7k but we did a lot ourself. My gran's was done via council grant and it cost €16k but that was without kitchen changes and in fairness they used specialist bathroom fittings.

iguana

Andrew Duffy wrote:

Is this a period house, where the original upper return bedroom was turned into a useless bedroom and a useless bathroom?

Yeah that's exactly it. It is a house I was considering buying, tbh though as a 2 bed house it isn't really worth the price. I was comparing it to other houses in the area and there are others in better condition, nearer the tube that aren't all that more expensive once you take the work costs into account. The only real reason to buy it would be because it is in one of the few areas of London where house prices are still rising fast. And that holds true for any houses in the area.

the_syco

A few houses around here were sold for a higher price than their neighbours, due to the fact that they had a converted attic bedroom. Of course, as it didn't have the min spoec to be called a room, it wasn't, but it was still shown by the estate agent.