The classic interwar layout puts the bath and basin in one small room and the toilet in another, side by side at the top of the stairs. It made sense when the houses were built. Today it means two cramped rooms, two doors and nowhere to put a decent shower.
Why knock through?
- One bigger room with space for a bath and a separate walk-in shower
- A better layout: the shower often goes where the toilet was
- Room for storage: a proper vanity unit instead of a pedestal basin
- One door instead of two, freeing wall space on the landing
Think about the toilet first
The wall
The wall between the two rooms is often a lightweight partition, but not always: in some houses it helps carry the floor or roof above. We check how it’s built before anything comes down. If it carries load, the opening needs a beam, a structural design and building control approval, which changes the cost and timing.
Pipes and the soil stack
In most 1930s semis the soil stack runs down an outside wall, close to where the toilet already is. That makes the toilet the one thing that’s cheapest to leave roughly where it is. Moving it far from the stack means a longer waste run with enough fall, sometimes through the floor.
While the walls and floor are open, it’s also the time to replace old pipework. Original or patched pipes, lead sections and corroded joints often turn up once the tiles come off. Replacing them now costs far less than opening the walls again later.
The window
Interwar bathrooms usually have one small window, often obscured glass. Plan the layout around it: a bath under the window works well, while a shower under it needs a window that can take getting wet, or a screen that keeps water off it. An extractor fan is required regardless, and a window alone isn’t a substitute.
The floor
Timber floors in houses this age can be uneven, and the old toilet room floor may sit at a slightly different level. Before tiling, we level the floor and board it so the new tiles don’t crack when the joists move. If you’d like warm floors, underfloor heating goes down at this stage.
A typical new layout
- Walk-in shower where the toilet room was, in the corner
- Bath along the long wall, often under the window
- Vanity unit and mirror opposite
- Wall-hung toilet near the soil stack, with the cistern boxed into the wall
- Heated towel rail by the door
Every house is a little different, which is why we start with photos of both rooms and the landing between them. Send them through the quote form and we’ll suggest a layout.