Convert to bath - shower combination
Early last year (2011) I took the plunge to turn my small and pokey second bathroom into a bath-shower combination. With two grown boys not yet ready to leave home, a desperate alternative was required to make the bathroom more accessible, rather than sharing my shower!
Because the guys prefer to shower, the bath-shower combination allows the bathroom to serve double purpose without losing any floor space. It's a small bathroom and fitting a shower into this tiny space would have been mission impossible.
The most important element required for the transformation was to fit a glass bath panel down one side of the bath, to allow the bathtub to be used for bathing or for showering. A 12mm aluminium channel was mounted onto the side wall and on top of the retaining wall for the bathtub, and into which the glass is secured with silicone sealer.
You only have to page through magazines, and even Home-Dzine, to see gorgeous bathrooms that are bigger than most homes. Let's be honest, who really has a bathroom that size? Most homes have a reasonably large en suite bathroom and a second bathroom that you have to squeeze into.
But there are plenty of smart space-saving features to help you really make the most of a bathroom of limited size, and including a bath-shower combination is just one example.
aluview bath & shower screen
I would, however, advise on a smaller panel than the one I installed in the bathroom, especially if the bath is only open on one side. The panel is 800mm wide and only leaves enough space to enter and leave the bath, but becomes a pain when cleaning. A panel of 600mm width would be more than sufficient. A bath panel of 10mm-thick safety glass will cost around R1800. Have a couple of hefty lads on hand to help carry the panel to its location - it weighs a ton! If everything is already set up, the glass can be fitted into position and sealed in place immediately.
A compact bath with a wall-mounted shower will meet all of your family's requirements, and can be easily installed with a glass panel that won't feel make the bathroom feel smaller. Plus the added benefit of a shower-bath combination means that, if you ever sell your house, buyers can always revert back to the bathtub if they have small children.