bathroom tiles | we bought a french house

Bathing beauty

The last time I did a ‘get the look’ post I got a lot of love for it. Like I said before, I AM a journalist so research is in my DNA. Its one of the things I love about renovating (and oddly one of the things that other people cite as the reason they don’t do it – “who has the time to look for tiles blah blah”)

Its where other blogs are invaluable too as blogging is a way for those of us who love searching down bargains and unique ways to decorate to share our wisdom. And I often wonder what would I choose for my homes if I could choose anything. Where would I start if money were no object. For me the starting point of any room is usually based around some money saving necessity and I take it from there usually via Ebay!

In the case of my downstairs bathroom the bath was the thing that had to stay. It was in the room when we moved in but had slime and quite possibly an ecosystem living in it. There were vines and creepers growing through the window of this room and it had a concrete floor and falling down walls.

A hot water tank. Which means – HOT water!

This picture above was how it looked AFTER we’d cleaned it up a lot. But thanks to a lack of funds, Peter decided that the bath had to stay. And I rather liked its little metal feet so I said OK. And as you can see – the floor had been accessorised with a rather nice piece of cardboard that we had to step on so floor tiles were needed asap. So we visited B&Q near our house in London and found some slate tiles a bit like this that were on sale. So for only about £100 we had enough to cover our floor and do a skirting board in them too.

Colours Excellence Pack of 5 Black Slate Wall & Floor Tiles (L)300 x (W)300mm

B&Q slate floor tile

Most places do slate tiles like this. And I love the look. I could have spent more and got these ones from Topps Tiles

Or really blown the budget and gone to Fired Earth who do these brilliant rectangular tiles which I think give a lovely country feel. In fact am now wishing I’d pushed the budget a bit. Maybe when its time to re-renovate and I’ve turned this blog into a moneyspinning enterprise with my own TV show I can make Fired Earth rather than B&Q my home.

And on our walls we went for Cornforth White by Farrow and Ball – I can’t even remember how or why we got to this colour but it may have involved my friend and colleague Oonagh who knows every F&B colour by heart. I suspect some nights she dreams of Farrow and Ball. Her alltime fave BTW is Light Blue which isn’t really blue at all but grey. But maybe she suggested Cornforth to go with the slate – either way it works and I am really happy with it.

Farrow and Ball Cornforth White

The bathroom suite itself (and I use the word suite loosely as the dodgy old iron bath was staying, all I needed was a loo and a sink) came from a local bathroom centre in Greenwich. Well, Charlton technically. Lets go for West Charlton. Its called Gem Discount Bathrooms and sells pretty much any type of bathroom you would want but the ones you can get for really knock down prices are the ‘traditional’ look ranges. Everyone does them and they are always on sale because no one likes them anymore. Or at least they don’t like them in their wipe clean, modern, limestone tiled London bathrooms. (And I don’t really either though I did just do up my bathroom at home and went for something in between)

My new London bathroom!

More London en suite bathroom

Savoy toilet from Bathstore.com

Anyway I digress…. Victorian style bathrooms feature on most people’s sites and are often on sale. Ones I love include this bathstore.com old school cistern at the top loo.

It is part of their Savoy range which looks like this. Perfect for French Country homes. Or English Country Homes I suppose. But maybe not in downtown Dalston!

Winchester-Bathroom-Suite-white-seat_514

Winchester Suite from Victoria Plumb

Or Victoria Plumb often have things on sale. This bathroom suite is currently only £168 for the loo and sink!

And after that I just added things found at Vide Greniers. A lovely vintage picture which remains one of my fave ever finds. A storage cupboard from a local brocante (which Peter had to tie to top of car and drive home).

Moustache mat from Primark

But my favourite recent addition is my moustache bathmat from Primark (who FYI do some great bits and pieces of homeware!) Ta da! And only £6 I think. Bargain.

I haven’t shown you around our top floor yet. Largely because it is derelict. Or it was. We had been so busy doing up the bits of the house we needed to use that we left the third and top, attic floor well alone. Our cleaner, Madame Landauer refuses to go up there on the grounds that it makes her Peur (scared) – she is convinced there are bats living there or worse (can’t think what would be worse than bats really – lions? Crocodiles?)
But we had by now bought an enormous chandelier to light our way up there. It is made up of hundreds of wine glasses which seemed rather appropriate for our French home. Though ironically, it came from a danish website whose name I just can’t remember. But if you google ‘wine glass chandelier‘ they come up I think. It is a grand hallway to a shabby set of rooms.

The two attic rooms in my mind will one day be a dorm for loads of kids and the other a lovely master suite with roll top bath in middle of the room but for now they look like this…

And in between them was a horrid little room with the ceiling falling down and damp rot everywhere….

We desperately needed another loo – so that while one person showered the other, up to, 13 people didn’t have to cross their legs! And this bathroom could be used by all sleeping on the second floor in it’s various interconnecting bedrooms.

So we decided to make our rotting, top floor hovel, middle room a bathroom. with a curved, walk in shower, a loo and the original sink, salvaged. We plastered, we painted and we caulked. Peter replaced the ceiling and the floor and then we tiled and we painted some more. And we drove our floor tiles all the way from here as I’d found them on the Topps Tiles website and had nowhere in London that they would work but in France? Somehow ok. They are the Henley range and I love them.

So here is our top floor bathroom now! Jolie non?