This week I am writing about something very exciting which all came together earlier this year. Finally, we have our new en-suite shower room completed, after waiting well over 12 years!

Yes, when we originally had an extension to our house around 18 years ago we had built an en-suite which at that time was a luxury, and still is. We had a fully tiled space with a reasonably sized shower, standing basin and toilet. However, before too long the new shower started leaking down into our garage and after some investigation there was nothing for it but to rip the shower out…… and this is the way that it stayed for the next 12 years or so. We could still use the toilet and sink but it was always in our plans to update it, however somehow something else always seemed to take priority and our new shower always got shunted to the bottom of the pile.

Unfortunately I don’t have any photographs from those days but needless to say it was full of 90’s style tiles – dark apricot colour with the occasional flower motif and vinyl flooring. So during last year we decided to make this long forgotten room a priority and put it to the top of our list.

During the intervening years our neighbours had built an extension which annoyingly had blocked out a great deal of light coming through the small window and the room seemed quite dark, so the first thing we did was to have installed a Velux sun tunnel. This is an ingenious idea where a hole is cut into the roof and a reflective tube is fitted that sits into the ceiling bringing in lots of light, as you can see below:

The revamped en-suite had been in the pipeline for so long that I knew in my mind exactly what I wanted and during last summer I began researching products and companies who could pull the look together. I finally settled with a local company and was introduced to Greg and who I immediately felt at ease with and our initial appointment with him lasted around 2 and a half hours, with us being the last people to leave the shop!  He look the room’s measurements and tried various designs on his computer.  I had explained that my vision for the room was a wet-room – as we had had previous leaking into the garage we wanted the whole area sealed to prevent a repeat of this, and I imagined a spa-like finish which included a wall hung toilet and basin, a glass partition with walk in shower area and also key to my design was a seated area within the shower itself.  Greg played around with various options but was unsure how the sink design would fix to the glass partition.  He then came up with the idea of building a three quarter height wall and building the seat to fix in-between the walls.  I loved this idea!  From then on the ideas flowed – a small wall would be built out from the back to house the workings for the toilet and sink – we were to have a drawer unit with white worktop which has a bit of a sparkle to it – and on top of this we chose a round basin with taps hung from the wall.  This look was so different to anything I had lived with before and I could feel my dream coming together.  Greg had the expert knowledge to put it all together and worked out that we could have a shower head which hangs from the ceiling – this is digital  and flashes until the correct temperature is reached (fancy:)!)- we also wanted a second small hand held shower to compliment the showering experience.

As just seen here, ceiling shower together with handheld

Once we had the design settled we had to impatiently wait for a start date for the work to commence – and one last job to chose the tiles.  Greg had lent us a sample tile upon our initial visit and no matter how many I looked at, nothing beat that initial tile – and of course they were expensive Italian Porcelanosa tiles – but, hey I have expensive taste!  We have large oblong tiles for the wall and square for the floor providing a touch of contrast.

Greg’s recommended builders did a grand job – although it came with the usual big clean up once they had finished – and it took nearly a couple of weeks to fit.  Here are a few pics of the finished room:

We are so pleased with the result – it makes all those years of waiting worthwhile – and I feel we have the best design (we had a previous design drawn up some years ago, but it wasn’t a patch on what we have now).  Showering is now a treat – and the best thing – sitting down on the bench to shave my legs!   Of course I am still looking for the perfect accessories to complete the look, but nothing too much; my aim is to keep it minimal.  Hope you like:

Finally, a couple of weeks after our room was complete the showroom sent out their resident photographer who worked her magic and featured us in their blog which please read through here Lifestyle Blog

Please check this out as the photographs are much more detailed than mine and there is also a lowdown on the products used