OUR RENOVATION JOURNEY: OUR EN-SUITE BATHROOM PLANS WITH KOHLER

House Lust en-suite drawing by William at Drench showers. Design by Amanda Cotton.

AD/ PR Gift : The Kohler products have all been gifted for marketing purposes across my social channels. All thoughts, opinions and interior design is my own.

It’s another week over at the rat house renovation and I thought it was about time I shared some more of our plans, so today I’m talking about our en-suite bathroom.

I found designing our bathrooms the hardest of all the rooms. Unlike the other rooms which are more or less just paint or wallpaper, there are so many more components which need to be considered with designing a bathroom.

First of all theres the layout to think about- the sewage pipe will dictate where the toilet has to go unless its easily moved, or if your planning a renovation then consider this from the start. Then there’s the look and style to consider- modern, traditional, retro, classic. Then the tiles and brassware. Storage is also an important factor, plus shower screens, bath shape, sinks… honestly the choice is endless.

I found sites such as Pinterest a mind-field as theres almost too much inspiration out there. All I knew is that I wanted the space to make my heart sing and bring me joy, and I didn’t want to get hung up on longevity this time. As much as I’d like to hope that I love it as much as I do right now in five years time, I’m not going to worry about that and enjoy it for the now. My theory is you never regret the choices you make, only the one you didn’t, and this design makes my heart sing.

Before shots of the en-suite bathroom

Our ensuite bathroom is located in the new extension part of our house and is off the dressing room and master bedroom. It’s a good size at 3.5m x 2.7m wide so I decided to add a bath and a shower to it.

My starting point with the design of this bathroom was actually the washbasin. After scrolling through Pinterest (I know, after just saying it was overwhelming with ideas) I came across a scroll stopping image which stopped me in my tracks and it was this Brockway wall mounted cast iron basin from Kohler.

After doing a bit more research, I discovered that Kohler is an American brand, but unlike most of the other cool American brands which we don’t have access to here in the UK, Kohler is well and truly here in the UK!!

Kohler, Brockway basin.

After then delving further into Kohler, I fell deep down a Kohler rabbit hole of beautiful brassware and decided to design our whole ensuite bathroom around their chrome brassware, cast iron brockway sink and their cast iron Cleo bath.

When it came to choosing tiles, I decided on encaustic (concrete) tiles from Mosaic factory. At Mosaic factory you can design the ties yourself and I was pretty sold on this. I mean, who doesn’t want to design their own tiles if they can? I went for a 20cm x 20cm square tile in colour R pink and B white. I wanted to bring the tiles all the wall down the walls and onto the floor for a bit of a seamless look in this room, then paint the rest of the walls white.

Mosaic factory encaustic tiles (20cm x 20cm) in colours B and R. Shower enclosure colour choices from Drench Showers.

I’ve chosen chrome Kohler brassware for this space as I thought it was more timeless and popped more against the pink and white tiles. Because I’ve gone for the Kohler Cast iron cleo bath, I’ve chosen the composed floor standing bath tap. I’ve always wanted a floor mounted tap as I hate it when taps stick out to much- especially when bathing our toddler, he has a habit of bashing his head, so I’m future proofing with this floor mounted one.

For the shower enclosure, I did consider a wet room, but our builders advised us about wet rooms unless there on the ground floor because of leaking. Instead we are having a 1400 x 800 shower tray from Kohler and are getting a contrast black shower screen from Drench Showers. We had a black drench shower screen in our old house and I loved the contrast against the tiles. This time we’re going for a black boarder shower screen with a chrome handle to tie in with the Kohler chrome brassware.

These are the bathroom components which I’m using…

My Kohler en-suite bathroom selection

1. Kohler Composed Floorstanding bath & shower mixer £1,020

2. Kohler ModernLife™ Close Coupled toilet pan Toilet £550

3. Kohler Standard 1400 x 800mm Rectangle Shower Tray £368

4. Kohler Brockway™ 3' Wall-mounted cast iron sink, 2 tap holes  £3,519 inclusive of the soap dispenser and taps (This is only available through the Kohler Experience Centre in Clerkenwell).

5. Kohler Artifacts Thermostatic Built-in Single Sequential Shower Valve with 2-way Diverter £700

6. Kohler Cléo Freestanding bath £2,992

7. Kohler Triton taps

8. Kohler Katalyst Traditional round rainhead 8" diameter £325

9. Kohler Artifacts Handshower £120

10. Kohler Components 610mm towel rail £84

11. Kohler Components pivoting toilet roll holder £63

12. Drench shower screen - Boarder

Progress shots of the en-suite bathroom

In terms of layout, you might have seen from the sketch at the top that I have decided to have the bath under the window. The shower enclosure will be on the opposite wall to the bath, in the corner and will have a built in shower shelf for our shampoo bottles.

The Brockway sink is wall mounted and will be mounted to the wall on the left where you enter the room, and the toilet will be opposite.

I didn’t want any of the sewage pipes to show on the back of the house, so our builders have made sure they’re all on the side and out of view, so this dictated where the toilet had to go.

***My tip when designing your bathroom is to always check the sewage pipe location first, as its not always an easy job to relocate it ***.

The Cleo Cast iron bath from Kohler.

And that pretty much raps up the design of our ensuite bathroom over at the rat house. It’s all currently underway and should be finished over the next few weeks. Who’s excited to see it finished? I for one am super excited and cannot wait to share it with you. You can see how excited I was for the Cleo bath to arrive last week, so I cannot wait to see it all installed. I might even paint the underneath of the bath too. Can you guess what colour? I’ll give you a clue, it seems to be the common thread throughout our entire build….

OUR RENOVATION JOURNEY : THE GARDEN PLANS - PHASE 1

Taking on a home renovation is one thing but being ambitious enough to start a garden overhaul alongside it is another. Throw in a lockdown and a global pandemic and some might think I’ve completely lost my mind.

But the truth is, and if you know me then you’ll know this already, I’m pretty stubborn and even though our last house took years to get it how we wanted it, we didn’t have a two-year-old toddler in tow back then. Everything’s now ramped up to make our home as safe and secure as possible before we move in, because it won’t be long until we move in and have a little person wanting to use the outside space. Plus, with the emphasis on staying at home more, we want to be able to use our garden how we intend to from the offset.

I recently wrote a blog post about building work and all the extra costs which no one ever talks about and keeping money back for the garden was high on my list. It’s ironic really, as even though I know this, I haven’t taken my own advice and our garden budget is dwindling and I’m starting to spend the garden budget on tiles and taps, which for me are essential right now. Building work is tough as it is, extra costs can creep up and the garden is often neglected even though it’s never been so important now we’re in lockdown.

This is why I’m keen to crack on with it regardless, even if we do it in phases.

When we bought the house, the garden had been hugely neglected. This is no exaggeration; it was an actual jungle. Huge trees, brambles and no sign of a fence either side or at the back. We only ever walked through it once we had completed on the house which was probably pretty stupid as we didn’t even know how big the plot actually was. (You can view the jungle garden here on You Tube as my friend flew his Drone over it).

We had the trees chopped down straight away (luckily no TPO’s on our plot), mainly because they were dangerously big, too close to the house and one was split with a high risk of falling down. We then had the rest of the garden cut back and cleared.

It was great and it enabled us to start our building work once we got our planning permission. However, all the tree stumps remained and even worse, the tree roots were unseen underground, which left the garden pretty wonky and uneven.

But we have BIG plans….

Our plans involve laying a large 4m deep patio across the back of the house and a 4m deep decking area at the back of the garden (it’s north facing, so this way we can enjoy some sun all day long). As the garden isn’t even, we need the tree roots removed, and the garden levelled as much as possible.

We need to build a retaining wall next to the patio to compensate for the slope of the garden, add drainage near the house for the patio, add concrete bases for the patio and the shed/ studio, lay paving slabs and then lay a luscious lawn. Down the line we would eventually like to add a studio/shed as I mentioned, down the bottom of the garden which will need electricity -so we’re adding the pipe for this now to future proof ourselves.

As well as all that, we’d also like to replace a fence down the left side, plant new trees and plants and cut boarders in and have some rendered flower beds for more plants.

With all that in mind we have decided to do the garden in phases so we can manage our budget appropriately.

I always recommend getting at least three quotes per job so you can compare prices, and we did just that and decided to use a landscape gardener from Hoppy.co.uk to do the job.

Because we’re in a lockdown and in the middle of a global pandemic it did make getting quotes harder but because the garden is separate to the house build which is on-going, the landscaper and his team of labourers were able to work in isolation to the other builders.

So, this is phase 1 of our garden plans… (Time to do- approx. 5 days)

Days 1 -3   

The team of landscapers arrived, armed with diggers and dumpers ready to tackle the mother of all tree stumps at the back of the garden.

This was something they underestimated in terms of size, as it was a real beast of a stump and it ended up taking almost three days to grind down, dig around and then fully remove.

They removed many other tree stumps too, one which was even under our fence, and one quite close to the house, but these came out relatively easier in comparison using the digger, and they also cleared all the old debris – broken glass and timber which had been left by the previous owner.

Day 4  

They dug the hole for our soak away drain which was needed for our rainwater to be connected up for our house.

Then they laid a pipe for electricity from the house to the back of the garden– future proofing us if we want electricity at the other end of the garden for a studio later down the line.

Day 5

They levelled the garden into two levels, one near the house, ready for a concrete base to go in on phase two, and eventually to have patio slabs laid and the second level for the lawn and decking area. This involved levelling an old mound at the back of the garden.

They also removed all the tree stumps, excess soil and debris which was in the garden.

Thank you Hoppy.co.uk lads for working so hard.

We are delighted with the work and now it’s just got us itching to start phase two of the garden where we can start making it look pretty with concrete bases, slabs and retaining walls. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I am not Beyoncé, so for now this will have to wait.

This post was sponsored by Hoppy. All opinions and views are 100% my own.