Building a Basement Bathroom from Scratch
This is a recap of a recently completed project for a small basement bathroom located in Nepean (Ottawa).
We wanted to share this with our readers with hopes of inspiring them to embark on creative projects like these, turning their unused basement spaces into a functional and beautiful bathroom that can be enjoyed by extended family or guests and serve as a great way to improve your home.
This basement bathroom started as a clean slate. The room was used as a semi-storage, semi-closet space in an otherwise finished basement. Our clients reached out as they were in need of an additional bathroom in their home as they had extended family coming for a visit or stay. The goal was to create a small but functional bathroom consisting of a walk-in shower, a small vanity, and a toilet. From the onset, we were limited by the size of the room available to us. It was 120” long by 49” wide. Yes, we had a lot of lengths to work but very little width, and on top of that, there was an existing main drain pipe that was not feasible to relocate.
After a few design brainstorming sessions we have settled on an existing design where the 36×48” shower would occupy the far right side of the bathroom, the vanity would be in the center on the back wall and the toilet would go to the left. We have decided to relocate the existing room entrance from the main hallway to the living room with a slick addition of a pocket door.
So, we had our basic design done.
One particular aspect of this design was to enclose the main drain stack and while we are at it, to create a built-in, tiled seating bench. This turned out to be one of the coolest features of this shower. Not only were we able to create a shower bench, but by doing this, we had enlarged the size of a standard 36×48” shower to a large 48”x 48” space. It truly became a hybrid acrylic and custom shower. Combining the savings of an acrylic shower base with the versatility of a custom shower.
As with most basement bathroom renovations, our licensed plumber installed rough-ins for new bathroom fixtures, connected the new mixing valve, shower base, vanity supplied, and drain lines, and positioned the toilet flange.
Our electrician brought all the needed power, switches, and lights into the bathroom as well as an exhaust fan.
iBathrooms crew completed all prep work and all of the tiling was done by our skilled tiling contractor Sergey.
The entire project took just under 4 weeks with a few days of waiting for the City of Ottawa’s inspector to come for the various required inspections.
All-in-all, our customers now have a beautiful bathroom in their basement that will serve them for many years to come and will be enjoyed by everyone in their family and their friends.
We are very grateful to everyone who participated in this project and above all to our customers for their trust, patience during the process, and fantastic participation during the design stage and material selection.
Ben W.