With a global average family size now, having one bathroom in your home may no longer be enough for your family. Arguments over how long people use the bathroom are rife, especially when there are kids involved. For rental houses, a multi-bedroom house is more likely to be tenanted if there are multiple bathrooms. There is nothing worse than being late for work because your toothbrush is in the bathroom, and your housemate is in there for ages!
WHY IS THERE A NEED FOR AN EXTRA BATHROOM
Adding bathroom to existing slab increments your home’s resale value by 5% which generally outweighs the cost of installing a new bathroom and is, therefore, a popular choice among expanding families. Not only do you improve the value of your home, but it is an improvement that you can get real benefits from while you live there.
A study done by the National Association of Realtors concluded that half the homeowners who added a bathroom to their homes experienced increased happiness and a sense of enjoyment.
THE DOWNSIDES OF ADDING AN EXTRA BATHROOM
Bathrooms are expensive! Especially when you are trying to retrofit one into your existing house plan. You need to be able to connect to existing water and septic lines, and depending on what your house floor is made from this can be quite hard to achieve. If you have a concrete slab, then a lot of extra preparation work needs to go into cutting the concrete so you can access existing infrastructure and create new piping routes. This is why many people look at their current bathroom plan and work out if they can divide the existing bathrooms into two, or turn the bathroom into a 3-way bathroom for extra convenience. You can get the benefits, but with less of a change to infrastructure, therefore reducing the cost.
WHAT IS A THREE WAY BATHROOM?
A three way bathroom is simply, your bathroom split into 3 separate rooms. While this is not the most glamourous type – you won’t find it in designer magazines or on The Block, it is the most practical. For that reason it can have a huge effect on resale of your home. Basically, the toilet is in its own room, the shower (and bath if you have one) is in the other, and the vanity and taps are usually in their own space just outside the doors of the other two spaces. This means that someone can be on the toilet, another person can be in the shower, and another can be brushing their teeth and doing their make up, without any privacy or congestion concerns.
HOW DO I DECIDE ON WHETHER TO INSTALL AN EXTRA BATHROOM?
Once a final decision is made to go ahead with the construction of your new bathroom within the current layout of your house, few questions need to be considered and answered before any building work takes place. In fact, Paragon Tools provides this handy list of what you need to consider
- Is the space large enough for an extra bathroom?
- Does the new bathroom have enough natural lighting and adequate ventilation?
- The construction budget which ranges from a reasonably lower-end to extensive pricing.
- Whether the current plumbing is adequate to handle the extra pressure.
- Will, you be able to meet necessary building regulations?
- Who will be professional enough to hire for the long-run project?