Moving the bathroom door

When we first moved into the house we very quickly did not like the upstairs layout of the house, the extremely steep and dangerous stairs that went straight up and into the bathroom. The bathroom that was a step lower than landing floor. The upstairs didn't feel very well planned and the bathroom extension was simply that, it was a bolted on bathroom extension with no thought to fit it in with the rest of the house. 

We had already decided to remove the stairs and fit a new stair case going up the opposite way as well as having a quarter turn at the bottom meaning that the stairs were not as steep as before and therefore a lot safer. Which is particularly good for people as clumsy as myself who was always tripping up the old staircase. But with the stairs now coming up the other way this left the bathroom door to the wrong side of the bathroom. You would have to squeeze around a very narrow landing around the corner and through the door. So we decided that we would move the door from the right hand side to the left hand side. Although that sounds relatively simple it was a massive job that involved moving bedroom walls to make the landing big enough to except the new bathroom door. Removing the concrete wall where the new door will go and cutting into the ceiling to increase the height so that a full height door will fit in.

Here the concrete wall on the left has been removed and an acrow prop is held in place where the old door once was. This is just a temporary measure to keep the house safe whilst the new structural timber wall is built in it's place. 

The frame starts to go in and the shape of where the new door will go sits in place, we decided to build the frame out slightly further from where the original door sat and utilise the small bit of space that made the top of the old landing. Utilising this section of dead space means that firstly the space is not wasted, but secondly the bathroom is slightly bigger and we now have the space to include an inbuilt bathroom cupboard for towels.

The plasterboard is fitted to the new frame work.

With the new frame in place it is now time to remove the old lintel and bring the bathroom ceiling height up further to fit in with the rest of the bathroom. We won't go up as high as we would like as this would involve structural work to the roofing beams so although we will be gaining height in the bathroom it won't be flush with the rest of the bathroom ceiling. But it will be safe and not to mention cheaper doing it this way and we know that it will look so much better than it does now so we are more than happy. 

Where the existing concrete wall has been removed the floor was slightly uneven so a little cement has helped us to level this out.

The old section above the door is removed and the new section slightly higher starts to take shape.

The section starts getting boxed in and looks so much better than it did previously, the door now opens up onto the new wide landing and really was worth all the extra work to make the new doors position perfect.