Building a 5.5m Curved Shower Inside an Old French Barn

We’re building a 5.5 metre high curved shower inside an old stone barn in rural France, one of the most unusual things we’ve attempted in our renovation so far. We’re converting this enormous French barn into four holiday apartments ourselves, and for the first apartment Simon wanted something very different from a normal bathroom: a huge curved walk-in shower rising more than five metres towards the original barn roof. Turning that idea into reality is a lot more complicated than drawing a curve on the floor. We have to work out the exact shape, build a template so the curve stays consistent all the way up, install the plumbing before the wall gets too high and prepare the electrics for vertical LED lighting from floor to ceiling. Because we’re doing most of this French barn renovation ourselves, with a lot of help from Simon’s father, we can spend time building unusual details that would be extremely labour-intensive to have made professionally. This week the curved shower finally starts taking shape. We also test the LED lighting Simon has been imagining, reuse old rubble from the property inside the wall and slowly turn an idea on paper into something we can actually stand inside. Of course, life on our old farm in rural France continues around the renovation too. A storm sends us searching for walnuts, the mains water suddenly stops, rats are still causing trouble in the greenhouse and we dig what should finally be the last foundation for the first apartment. We’re Simon and Bram, a Dutch couple renovating an old farm in the French countryside. After restoring the farmhouse, we started converting the huge stone barn into four holiday apartments, doing most of the work ourselves while sharing the reality of DIY renovation and rural life in France. If you enjoy French renovations, barn conversions, old houses, unusual design ideas and doing things yourself, subscribe and follow the build as the first apartment slowly takes shape. Would you build a 5.5 metre high curved shower like this, or would you have kept it simple? CHAPTERS 00:00 Why build a normal shower? 00:37 From abandoned French farm to barn conversion 01:18 Building without an architect 02:22 Simon’s curved shower design 03:50 Creating the perfect curve 05:41 A storm and our walnut problem 08:06 The curved shower starts rising 08:50 Plumbing before it’s too late 09:34 Finishing another apartment wall 11:24 We suddenly lose our water 12:33 Reusing rubble inside the shower 13:40 The rats are back 14:33 Digging the final foundation 15:04 The first rain in weeks 16:30 A cold market day in rural France 19:05 Testing the shower LED lights 20:35 Removing an old rainwater pipe 21:23 Fixing another planning problem 22:42 The curved shower takes shape 23:39 One final push on the walls 25:11 The walnut experiment #FrenchBarnRenovation #BarnConversion #DIYRenovation