Interview with a renovator - Sophie’s bathroom makeover
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Today we’re having a chat with Reno Club member and course student Sophie who is in the early stages of renovating a 2 bed house in London with her other half Lyndon.
Sophie joined our renovation course and Reno Club a few months ago and has since made stellar progress with a beautifully styled bathroom to boot!
Let’s find out a little bit about her challenges, inspirations and learnings so far whilst being a renovator and if you’re curious about bathroom renovation costs then read about what budget you should allocate and how we budgeted for ours after seeing this amazing makeover…
Tell us a bit about your project; the era, size, area of the country, what kind of state is it in?
The house is a 70’s build (ex council flat) located 2 minutes’ walk from Brick Lane in London. It’s 92sqm, two floors, plus a small garden. 2 x bedrooms. The kitchen looked quite new/good condition, considering the sellers had mentioned it had been updated 10 years ago. There was some new-ish dark blue-grey carpet in some rooms, quite old purple carpet in the master bedroom and bamboo flooring in the second bedroom and kitchen.
The bathroom looked OK, but wasn’t to our particular taste. It was tiny, had a tired looking electric shower that worked on and off. The toilet was separate and had textured wallpaper.
The place has artex ceilings throughout. A lot of the walls had wallpaper that had been painted over, and you could see the seams of the wallpaper underneath.
What was your biggest worry about renovating?
Finding asbestos
Not getting permission as it is a leasehold property
The potential cost, we’ve had to adjust our ambition to be more realistic :), the renovation course helped us to create a very realistic budget for the actual renovation, and helped us to figure out what really mattered to us.
What has been the biggest surprise about planning for your renovation?
Well firstly, Covid 19 - the works had been planned to start a couple of weeks after lock down, we had to wait until it lifted a bit so we could stay with friends. Then there was how many additional costs there are to get different permissions/sign offs from the freeholder (council) - and how slow it can be. And finally, how much time you can spend deliberating over the smallest details! You become an expert on things you’d never imagine (eg toilet flush plates, different tones of grout, curtain pleat types, etc)
Have you found any good Instagram accounts for inspiration?
So many! Here are just some..
Debeauvoirhome - good combo of inspiration and progress shots on their own place, nice combo of architectural/industrial style, natural tones and textures with the odd touch of vintage through metals, panelling and furniture.
Bauwerkcolour - nice inspo shots
Dowsingandreynolds - got our shower and some fixtures through there, love their aesthetic
Mytinyestate - an incredible account documenting a journey about fixing up a beautiful country estate, it’s nice to daydream about the project, but can see how much work it would really take. You’d definitely need to be handy.
Hygge_for_home - beautiful inspo shots, and also fun progress of their build
We also use Pinterest and newsletters (eg The Modern House, Houzz) heavily in the inspo process
Can you share with us any of your ideas for layout?
We wanted to make the bathroom bigger, so knocked down two walls
If we had a money tree, we would have also made downstairs all open plan (living room and kitchen) but in the end, this isn’t our forever home, so the cost didn’t really add up, and there are also benefits of keeping separate
Do you have any ‘go to’ or favourite suppliers / brands?
Industville for lighting
Dowsing & Reynolds for some of the fittings (light switch, shower) although we were sparing… both because of cost and functionality - learnt something new about intermediate and 2 way switches for the hallway!
Victorian Plumbing for things like the toilet and shower tray
Walls and floors for most of the tiles
Lyndon and I have discovered that we have expensive taste :) but were able to find close dupes most of the time, and instead spent a bit more on fixtures.
Which room are you most excited about renovating? And what are your initial ideas for the room?
Step 1 for us was the artex ceilings - I really didn’t like look of it and was scared we wouldn't be able to update it because of the potential of asbestos (luckily they didn’t have it and we were able to get help plastering over it)
The bathroom was a big deal for us, as we both wanted the extra space and the old electric shower playing up was annoying enough to prioritise it. We needed to figure out which walls we could remove and what was possible in terms of space, and three things we both really wanted was great lighting (both dimmable mood lighting, and daylight lighting for makeup etc), bench space around the sink, and a shower that wasn’t electric because everything we found was a major aesthetic killer (if someone goes into the business of making stylish electric showers, they’ll make an absolute killing!) we found some nice black ones, but we wanted to go for brass fittings throughout
What would you say to someone who is thinking about joining the How to Renovate a House Course + Reno Club?
In terms of the renovation course, it helped us to figure out what was the best order to do things (which can be surprisingly overwhelming when you’ve never renovated before!), and the planners helped to facilitate the right questions about budget and priorities. In terms of the Reno Club, everyone has been so encouraging around our progress shots, and also helping with ideas around more affordable options of the items we’d ideally want, possibly saving us £1000’s
So far, if you could give one piece of advice to another renovator, what would it be?
Asking as many people for as much advice as you can, the more you know the more confidently you can make decisions you’ll feel good about.
Get a head start on your renovation
Learn to budget your project, save money, smash your layout, identify your style, plan and manage your renovation and join 150+ other renovators in our Reno Club.
