Bath Surround

The current trend with bathrooms, is, ironically, the free-standing bath and a look in any bathroom catalogue will show that there are many to choose from - both contemporary and traditional. There is no doubt that our en-suite bathroom has the space for one, but on one of her many trips to showrooms, Jan tried one out (not with soap and water, obviously !) and found she didn't like it. A feeling of isolation and vulnerability is how she described it.

We have therefore gone for a standard bath that needs to be boxed in. However, neither of us liked the standard flimsy plastic panels that they sell with the bath, so we have opted to make our own. The basic idea is to have a tiled surround into which the bath sits, but with a gap at the front in order to make getting in a little easier (and without the risk of cold tiling on the skin).

First step in a wooden frame bolted to the wall :

Followed by a ply-wood top, with tap drillings (note the black corners, where the jigsaw was very reluctant to make the turn, and smoked it's way through the wood !) :
With the bath offered up :
And finally mocked up with the side pieces :
The top, sides and front "legs" will be tiled, with a simple ply panel infilling at the front. This panel is going to be painted with some metallic purple paint mixed to match the wacky basin. Jan has found someone in Gloucester who will mix and match this for her. His usual customers are customising motor bike fuel tanks, and VW combi vans, so a bath panel will probably be a novelty for him !

Incidentally, the wires and hose on the bath are because it has hot air bubbles, and chromatherapy lighting built in. We need to run some electrical cables to power this from some switched units outside the bathroom door. More "extras" for the electrician. Oh dear.

The bath is an "Airbath", made in Yorkshire. I would give the URL, only it doesn't work because, since we bought it, they have gone out of business, or been taken over - not sure which.

That's the guarantee null and void then. Bahhhhhhh.