Outhouse / Utility

A cold and cobwebby single skin room tacked onto the back of the house, transformed into a super useful space.

The outhouse which is at the back of the house has, since we first bought the house, been the most useful room. Even though, up until now, it’s been a truly horrible place to spend time in! We think its original function was to store coal and gardening equipment. It did also always have a loo too, which I think has always been there since the house was built in the early 1940s.

Here are some photos of the outhouse when we viewed it, and as we have been using it up until recently…

It had a rather vibrant/cobwebby lime green loo. Not the prettiest, but useful!

So, it really wasn’t a priority for us to get this room sorted, and it served us fine up till now….until I got itchy feet and decided it really did need to be addressed, as we will be living in this house for at least another two years. I do also believe that having this space renovated will increase the re-sale value.

The Process

This part of the house was only a single skin of bricks, so to turn it into a more functional space, it needed insulating and plaster- boarding. It also didn’t have a ceiling, so that had to be thought about too…

Builders quoted for basic works to be done which included:

Insulating
Plasterboarding
Plastering
Installing a ceiling
Lighting
Building up the walls between loo and rest of room to ceiling height
1x new window
Plumbing for radiator
Plumbing for new sink and loo
We also agreed to lay self levelling compound over the existing concrete floor

The images above show the room after it has been insulated and boarded, before the floor was levelled. The last images are just after it had been plastered. We paid tradesmen to do this work for us. You can just about see the new ceiling with loft hatch and lighting too.

Details

We were able to salvage some of the original features, which I was super happy about. The main ones were the doors - I sent the heavy back door between the house and the outhouse, along with the loo door to be stripped of years worth of paint. They came back better than I could have imagined and add lots of character back into the space too! I used a company in Southampton who collected the doors, stripped and sanded them and delivered them back the following week.

I also salvaged the door handle on the loo, and stripped the paint off that too - and also the loo roll holder, which was stripped with the doors, and I just relocated it to a wall.

We asked the builder to rehang the door so it opened outwards so that we could install a sink.

Decorating

I saved some money by doing all the decorating myself. As the loo is so tiny, I wanted to go all out and try something different! I decided on a dark green gloss paint finish for the bottom section (Invisible Green by Little Greene) which finished just above the sink and acts as a backsplash. The colour above the green is Wimborne White by Farrow and Ball but colour matched by Dulux Trade.

I also used the Wimborne White for the rest of the utility room, and painted the ceilings white.

Invisible green high gloss by little greene

wimborne white on the walls, shadow white on the wood work (both farrow and ball - dulux trade colour matched).

Flooring

This was done on a budget, so expensive tiles sadly were not an option here! I decided to risk it and go for some cheap, cheap (£7.99 psm) vinyl flooring from Online Carpets. Initially, I ordered matt black, but as soon as it arrived I realised that was a mistake (as it shows ALL of the dirt!!!) - luckily, they’d actually sent the wrong size, so I sent it back and replaced with a herringbone wood effect option which I was dubious about, however I was actually pleasantly surprised by it when it was laid (I paid for a professional to fit it which was £150).

The (nearly) Finished Space

Overall, a practical and useful space, and just generally a much nicer and warmer space to use. I’d really like some floor to ceiling fitted cupboard made to hide the freezer and create some really great storage at some point though. I’m thinking that some simple ply ones will be ideal, so keep your eyes peeled for another project coming soon!