ᐅ Renovation of guest toilet (1.65 sqm) and bathroom (4.88 sqm)

Hello everyone, this is my first post in this great forum. Until now, we (two adults, a 1-year-old, and a 3-year-old) have always rented a place with 80 sqm (860 sq ft). Now we have bought a 4-room apartment of 85 sqm (915 sq ft), built in the 1960s, on the right bank of the Rhine in Cologne.

So far, very little has been done in the apartment and it has just been gutted. We need new vinyl flooring with baseboards, completely new electrical installation with RCD (residual current device) and Cat7 cabling, new bathrooms (very small, which I believe is typical for the building period), new tiles, and also new plaster and wallpaper, and so on... We will keep the IKEA kitchen, which will only get a new tile backsplash.

The biggest “construction project” is the bathroom: I’ll share our plans and thoughts here. I hope you’ll join in and comment.

The first plumber we spoke to only wanted to sell us items from his stock of sanitary components (is that the right term?), and that came to about 10,000 euros without the soil pipes. But all the parts were from the company Sanibel and some looked really bad — especially the toilet. The price markups here were about 3/4 to 1.5 times.

We now have a different plumber who confirmed he would also help us, for example by ordering stock items directly from Megabad. Here are the two projects: guest WC

Renovation of the guest WC (1.22m x 1.36m = 1.65 sqm / 4 ft x 4.5 ft = 17.7 sq ft)

• Possible instant water heater? (This requires a high-power electrical connection, which is expensive and probably unnecessary, according to my partner... I’m unsure if it would improve usability and the resale value of the apartment in case we find a better place or a house.)
• Small washbasin, preferably with a vanity cabinet (round or rectangular, depending on which fits better in the space — e.g., Godmorgon from Ikea? versus Geberit Icon with something underneath or wall-mounted)
• Toilet, preferably a wall-hung close-coupled toilet with concealed cistern (Geberit or similar, flush plates like Sigma 01, which we have in our current rented apartment)
• Possibly a small towel radiator, 45 cm wide, less than 1 m high, if it fits
• Omit wall tiles? But then the area around the recessed in-wall cistern might look odd, probably

And this is what it currently looks like:

For the small bathroom, there’s also the idea of moving the door to open outward towards the front door. This wouldn’t cause much disturbance and would mean we wouldn’t have to consider the door swing inside the bathroom. The question is whether this would gain us significantly more space to plan differently or if it wouldn’t make much of a difference. The bathroom is very small anyway; here is the current status.

Bathroom renovation (by shifting the wall: 3.05m x 1.6m = 4.88 sqm / 10 ft x 5.25 ft = 52.5 sq ft)

• Instant water heater
• Large shower bath (about 1.70m x 75 cm) (5 ft 7 in x 30 in) with splash guard wall versus a large bathtub with later add-ons... I’m unclear if shower baths are really worth the extra cost.
• Large washbasin (Geberit Icon, Ideal Standard, or similar)
• Long, wide towel radiator next to the door (75 cm x at least 112 cm) (30 in x 44 in)
• Tile backsplash 1.20 m (4 ft) or slightly higher around the bathtub

And this is how it looks now:

What do you think of our plans? Where should I give this more thought? Do you have a similar city apartment and have planned similar renovations? (Honestly, I don’t even know where to start; as I said, we are renovating EVERYTHING except the windows and other common property. The bathroom and the tiles are currently the most urgent. I thought I’d post here.)

I’d be happy to hear your opinions and suggestions. Although it’s only 5 sqm (54 sq ft) and 1.5 sqm (16 sq ft), we want to use it for four people. Do you have ideas for good fittings?

Oh, and including renewal of the apartment’s plumbing parts, we don’t want to spend more than 20,000 euros (plumbing installation / tiles / screed replacement in the bathroom / pipe renewal in the building)… that should be doable, right? I’m a rookie and hope I can start a discussion here about our plans and everything related to this.