Family Elmgren's bathroom renovation blog

Each step in the right directions feels great. Today all the old interior is going to be removed.

The workers tipped us off that there are buyers interested in well-preserved bathroom furnishing from the 1960s. Sweet! We have managed to sell the washbasin, toilet, towel hooks and toilet paper holders - all in matching mint green from 1964 - on the Blocket site.

The buyer had just bought a villa from the 1960s and was delighted to find original fittings to match. It's good to know that someone will make use of it! The yellow bathtub was the only thing that no-one wanted...

The dehumidifiers are now in place. We were warned that they would make a lot of noise, but we don't really notice them. Now we just have to wait for everything to dry out!

We're still thinking about the design of our new bathroom. It's hard to come up with the best way of using the tricky, limited space we have. We want a decent-sized corner bathtub, to keep two separate toilets, have a good shower area, reassure that there is plenty of storage space and so on. Should we change the floor layout or keep it as it is? What's the best way to go?

Linus knows someone who works as an architect and who has recommended a former colleague who may be able to help us ... After a couple of meetings with the architect - who has all kinds of good ideas and is skilled at using a drawing program which will make the process a lot easier - we decided to change the layout. We'll reduce the size of the hall and move one of the toilets into the space this creates. We can then set up a shower niche in the space where the toilet used to be.

Now that we have decided on the floor plan, we've started to think about the bathroom furnishing.

We checked out a number of producers on the Internet and finally decided to go with Gustavsberg, which has a broad range including a lot of things that we think are really neat. We're also positively surprised by the environmental consideration behind many of the products. It's also great to be able to buy almost everything from the same place. The only thing we haven't found is a storage solution based around the washbasin that matches the dimensions of the new bathroom, so we've decided to design it ourselves and built it in place.

We've also chosen the tiles and ordered everything.

Finally dry!

It's now time to move onto the next step: demolishing and rebuilding the walls we've decided to move. Despite all the plastic and shielding of the construction area it creates a lot of dust...

The opening has been made in the wall for the new shower. We're starting to see how it may all look...

New walls in place!

All pipes come together in one place. A little different from how they built in the 60s!

Every thing that brings us closer to a complete bathroom feels like a small success.

At last you begin to see the outlines of a finished room. It's nice that everything is not dirty anymore.

It's quite fascinating how many steps you must go through to meet the building regulations.

This is a kind of water proof seal on top of the levelling compound, which will then be painted with primer. All these steps makes the process slow... It's frustrating at times...

Now we see the light at the end of the tunnel!

The larger the tile, the longer the tiling will take. But after a few days, the bathroom is almost completely tiled.

One more day, all grouting is done as well.

The bathtub is finally in place, hopefully the tiling will be fast!

When we planned the bathroom, we thought the relatively large bathtub would mean that we wouldn't be able to fit in two washbasins. We decided on a compromise solution, only one washbasin, in order to make room for the large tub.

Now that the tub is in place, however, we got a happy surprise: it's perfectly possible to fit double washbasins on the remaining surface. It's a pity we have to start over with the site-built cabinets, but it's worth it in order to get what we wanted from the beginning. We wish we had initially measured the distances and sizes of the walls and floors, e.g. with plywood boards or masking tape, to get a more realistic picture of the end result than what a drawing can provide.

A lot is happening fast now; we are finishing something new every day.

It looks very nice, now we're waiting for the water to be connected... You really have to be careful when planning the details, such as how the toilet roll holders should be placed. In the drawing it was a little rashly placed on the opposite wall, which would've been uncomfortable when visiting the toilet.

It's better to think twice time before you start drilling into the tile...

The small toilet room is also almost ready, only waiting for the plumber to get everything up and running...

The small toilet room is also almost ready, only waiting for the plumber to get everything up and running...

How nice it turned out! Almost time for the premiere!

We decided to do the settings in the bathtub and washbasin-mixer now, so the pressure and temperature is to our needs. It's much easier to do it before the tub has been tiled in.

We're satisfied with the tiles we have chosen. They are comfortable to walk on, too. It feels like this long project soon will be a thing of the past..

One thing we just realized is that even though it's lovely with a large open shower space, it might be nice to have a wall between the shower and the rest of the bathroom, especially when there are several members of the family on the go at the same time. That will be one more thing to fix at the end of the project.