saucydwellings

I live in a tiny, 41 sq m condo in Bergen, Norway, and last year we renovated our disgusting old bathroom. The small space was definitely a challenge, as was our very tight budget. There are a few details missing still but I'm really pleased with how it's turning out. :)



Let's start with some before-pictures:



The old bathroom basically consisted of two small rooms (with an open doorway in between), where you'd first enter from the bedroom into a small laundry area, and then a step up into the shower/sink area. The laundry area had room for a washing machine and not much else, there was a strange cabinet built around the water heater in the corner, but the narrow door made it really impractical to store anything in there. Having the shower and the (tiny) sink so close together meant one person could not be brushing their teeth while the other was in the shower. Other than being really impractical, the room was just plain out disgusting, much worse than the photos show. The tiles and grout were so dirty, and tiles were coming loose from the walls. The floor tiles had this kind of grainy surface which made it feel like it was always covered in sand. It was dark, and the only heating in there was a tiny oven, which I'm pretty sure was not safe to keep in a wet room. The above photo is from the realtor, and it makes it look MUCH better than it was, but you can see the dirty tiles in the bottom left, and also kind of how the room was split in two. Here are some more befores (the photos with stuff in them are from the previous owner):













And this is how it looked with everything ripped out:





And the afters (well, almost done anyway ;):



The small mirror and the furniture is from Ikea, they were the perfect size for our space. The big mirror was from a flea market for about €10. To the left of the sink is where we tore down the wall between the two rooms. We also had downlights and underfloor heating installed, but apart from that we did everything ourselves.



We made a little bench/seat to make the most of the dead space in the corner there.



The new shower is AMAZING!



When refinishing the walls we discovered an old doorway that had been covered up. We used it to incorporate shelves so we wouldn't need any extra furniture in the tiny room. At the bottom there is a laundry hamper that we built. The small ladder was washed up from the sea at our summer house a decade or two ago. Now we use it to reach the dryer, which is behind the curtain to the left.



We opened up the old cabinet in the corner to fit the washing machine and dryer, on top of eachother above the water heater, and then hid it all behind a curtain. My sister calls this the laundry tower!