We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about our bathroom. We may spend a lot of time in the bathroom (that’s a personal matter), but we probably don’t spend a whole lot of time pondering what’s in that particular room in our house. It’s a toilet, a tub/shower, and a sink. What else is there to it?
Plenty, as it turns out. Your bathroom doesn’t have to be basic. It’s an often overlooked room of your house, sure, but you can change that. A few upgrades will make your bathroom memorable in the best way. You’ll love it, and you’ll even love showing it off to house guests.
The first thing to consider is the tub and shower area. Is it cramped and tiny or roomy and comfortable? You shouldn’t have to put up with the former if it’s not getting the job done. Sure, you may be getting clean during your daily shower, but if you can barely turn around in the shower without hitting a wall, that’s no good. Also, how safe do you feel in the shower? We don’t mean safe in a horror movie sense, either, since you’re hopefully not bathing in the Bates Motel. Do you feel like you can get in and out of the shower without tripping and injuring yourself? Once you’re in the shower, is the floor slippery in a way that makes you uneasy?
You can solve the space issue by upgrading to a larger model tub. If you really like relaxing with a bubble bath, a garden tub may be the answer. For people who have an injury or other medical condition that makes climbing in and out of the tub a bit tricky, handicap bathtubs are a good solution. From the grab bars inside the tub to the slip resistant floor surface, such tubs offer people with limited mobility a more pleasant bathing experience. If you need it, there’s even plenty of room for wheelchair transfers. There’s all that plus hydrotherapy and chromatherapy systems built right in.
Deciding what to do with your bathing area is probably the biggest decision you can make, but it’s far from the only one. Maybe you want to switch from a bathroom sink to a nice glass basin, or maybe you want a toilet that has a button you can push on the back rather than a handle. Flush toilets have been around for a few hundred years now, but that doesn’t mean the technology around them has stopped advancing. You can get a toilet that flushes automatically. Heck, you can get one of those motion-sensor activated sinks that you see at movie theaters nowadays. Your bathroom can be as fancy as you want it to be, assuming you have the budget.
Speaking of budgets, it’s great if you have enough cash on hand to pay for all the improvements you want to make out-of-pocket, but if you don’t, that’s OK. You can speak to the finance pros at your credit union about taking out a home equity loan. You should consider all the pros and cons of taking on more debt first, but investing in your home is usually a pretty solid idea. You may want to sell it in a few years, or you may want to live in your home until you’re ninety years old, but either way, a new and improved bathroom can only increase the value of the house.