The story of my first major renovation. 29-year-old used property: Traditional bath to unit bath

From the moment I decided to buy this house, the one thing I knew I wanted to change was the bathroom. Honestly, I would have preferred to renovate it before moving in.

But in the end, there were parts I only noticed after I started living here and requested after submitting my initial floor plan, so I feel like it was actually good that I didn't end up doing double the work.

What was it like originally?

I won't go out of my way to post huge photos, but it looked something like this.

An old bath, a sink with water that kept dripping, and a mysterious closet. And what's worth noting is the terrible smell.

The floor of the closet was slightly caved in, and finding a dead giant cockroach after setting off a bug bomb once I decided to move in was a huge negative point. Also, the other room on the first floor had a mysterious smell that wouldn't go away no matter how much I ventilated it. Since the toilet is on the first floor and the entrance is there too, I would go down if necessary, but it had such an unclean and negative image that I really hated going down to the first floor.

With all that going on, for a month after moving in, I showered at the gym and used a laundromat for laundry. The room became a forbidden zone, and I almost never opened the door, but I noticed something just before the construction was officially decided.

Isn't the way the doors are installed just plain stupid?

Can you tell what's wrong with these doors?

There are two doors on two sides of a right-angled corner... I don't know if it was intentional or what, but in the real estate agent's floor plan, the door to the bathroom opened the other way, and I think that would have been better. But ultimately, this is what it boils down to.

Since I live alone, I could just be careful, but once I noticed it, it was nothing but a negative. I mean,

Why are the doors installed in such a stupid way?

Once I realized that, I had no choice but to have them fix that too, right? So, I decided to have them changed to sliding doors.

This is the floor plan I sent them.

Unit bath and vanity.

I did look at the catalog for the unit bath, but for the vanity, honestly, I didn't really need one. However, since the stance was to replace it rather than just remove it, I went with the cheapest one.

I told the contractor that I didn't have many preferences, but if there were color variations, I'd like to choose.

Regarding the unit bath, I asked for:
- The window to be sealed off
- No mirror to be installed

The reason I sealed the window was that I thought if there's a ventilation fan, I don't need a window for both heat insulation and security. I think many apartments have bathrooms without windows. They told me that if I just lock it and don't make any holes in the unit, there would be no extra charge, so that's what I did. I don't know if this method is good or bad. As for the mirror, I've thought since I was a kid, 'What kind of punishment game is it to have a mirror that gets dirty and fogs up so you can't see anything anyway?' lol. Maybe they include them because some men want to shave in the bathroom? I don't know what people will think when I sell it, but I guess you could just add a mirror if you really wanted to (lol).

As a result, the only things I really chose were the walls and the floor sheet.

Laundry drying space

As for what the laundry drying space is, in my previous home, I used to dry laundry in the bathroom. I wrote about this in detail in this article.

While I thought about putting a gas dryer in the new house, I felt I would never use the mysterious closet itself, so I decided to use that as a laundry drying space for the time being. That way, even if I do get a gas dryer, I can dry umbrellas or things that can't go in the dryer, so I figured I might as well create a dedicated drying space.

How did you have them do it?

I thought I had provided fairly clear requests beforehand, so I stayed in another room during the work. The construction period was 6 days, and the cost was almost exactly 2 million yen. Whether 2 million yen is expensive or cheap is a subtle point, but if I intend to live here for several years, I feel it's an amount I can absorb if I think of it as rent I would have paid anyway.

As for the noise, I think the demolition phase was the loudest. Once they get into the interior work, it's just the sound of scraping, not the sound of destruction.

Here is the finished result.

I chose navy for the wallpaper, and I think it was the right decision. It's incredibly good.

And I had them install a sliding door. The frame was left as is, which I plan to paint myself, and I'm filling the holes in the door with putty, but the problem of the 'stupid-looking door' has also been solved.

The smell in the other room on the first floor, which wouldn't go away no matter how much I ventilated it, was 95% gone the day after the construction finished, and today it's completely gone. I realized later that the cause of that smell was the bathroom... I didn't know what kind of smell it was, but to do laundry in my own home for the first time in a month, I put in a genuine Hitachi cleaner yesterday.

Now, this cleaner costs about 1,700 yen each, but even if the washing tub looks clear with drugstore washing machine cleaners, it seems to remove a ton of gunk, leaving it looking like this, which is shocking, so I recommend it. If anything, I feel like using this once every six months is more effective than using a drugstore one every month. Hitachi's is expensive to buy every month, so I do use the drugstore ones for occasional cleaning.

When I opened it, it smelled similar to the other room on the first floor, so maybe it's mold... Oh, I hate this.

But by changing the bath, the 'unpleasant feeling' drifting on the first floor has become zero. I feel that an unpleasant feeling in a place is likely caused by something harmful, whether it's mold or something else, flying around, so in such cases, it might be a good idea to renovate and reset it.

The experience of living in a rental might have been good too.

The only place I lived in on my own before was a rental, and in a rental, the landlord provides the bare essentials one way or another. What that means is that even if it's not completely state-of-the-art, I think it's in a state where it has the minimum modern facilities.

Personally, I didn't even know what a washing machine pan was, and if I hadn't lived in rentals, I don't think I would have ever thought that a bathroom without a window might be better. So, I kind of thought that maybe it's not a bad idea to go through a few rentals before buying your own home.

Also, the only thing I'm struggling with regarding how to replace it, even though I have to ask a contractor, is the 'ventilation fan'! I'm really debating whether I should replace the entire system kitchen (the price difference between just the fan and the whole system kitchen is more than tenfold). However, even if I were to replace the system kitchen, I've been painting everything here and there, and it's going to get dirty with paint anyway, so I'm thinking it might be better to wait until I've finished painting all the notable spots and putting up wallpaper.

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