This project is daunting. We knew when we bought the house that it would have to be approached, but we didn't know how soon, how much it would cost, or what we would do with it.
The first option was to leave the layout as-is (the layout makes no sense, as you'll see below) and just do a facelift. We decided to be real with ourselves, though, and recognize that kitchens & baths sell houses, so we decided that doing it up big (a full remodel) was the only way to go.
If you come to our house, it's highly likely that I will avoid showing you the master bathroom. It is by all means, disgusting. It is old, and our house was a rent house, so it was not well-taken-care-of.
The shower is moldy (I'm sure we are killing ourselves a little each time we use it) and everything is covered in mauve terrazzo. I know every guy wakes up wanting to shower in a pink bathroom....
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This is the tiny 24" doorway into our bathroom. It's like
that because the shower is immediately to the right of the
doorway. |
It was also a DIY gone bad. There are gaps between the tile and the wall where they didn't cut the tile properly so they just filled it in with grout, and the tiles are uneven so you kick them just a little.
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Gross, the drawer face fell off of the front of that cabinet.
Nevermind how messy we are. |
It's hard to will yourself to take care of something that was so poorly taken care of before. Oh, and this sink is so low, Austin just about breaks his back every morning.
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The stall looks somewhat updated but that's because we
spray-painted it. The glass is waterstained and that
seems irreversible. |
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That's right, just one sink in the master bath! Oh, and
trust me, that was not the best place to put a toilet.... |
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Anyone want to take a jacuzzi bath with a giant mirror?
No? Okay, lets make this laundry storage.
(That is Austin's "don't dry" pile.) |
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| Voila! This is where a toilet belongs... |
The vanity and the tub were part of a remodel to the house in the 80's (it had to be the 80's, the choices were so bad). It used to be a dog run from the garage to the back yard right off the laundry room/kitchen. Because our house only has indirect back yard access (through our bedroom or the garage) we considered reinstating this, but we decided the bathroom really does need to meet today's standards, so we are keeping that square footage in the bathroom. Plus, we weren't sure it'd give us much of an advantage over the alternate routes to the back yard. That indirect access problem is probably the #1 reason we'd ever move out of this house. Most houses have access from the living room/kitchen... but not us!
So here's the current layout, and the proposed layout. Note that the triangle thing in the proposed layout was (what I imagined to be) built-in storage, but we decided we'd just put a dresser up against that wall for storage instead. We are ditching that shower space entirely to open up the bathroom. It's a pretty tight fit right now. I'm also hoping to put in a full-length mirror in there. We don't have one anywhere in the house, and Austin is always asking if he is too wrinkly. The man needs a mirror.
This is the fourth paint-drawing I made of this space before we decided we liked this option. And now we really, really like this option (as in, this is it!).
We'd take out the awkward linen closet (it's too deep and narrow to be beneficial), widen the doorway and either put in a pocket door or narrow double-doors, make the bathtub area into a walk-in shower (NO GLASS!) and move the toilet ($$$) so it's more like a water closet where the vanity is currently. That double-sink is going to be spectacular - I think that area is something like 80" wide! I'm hoping to not have to move the drain where the bath is so we can save some money, but we will see what the contractor says when they come for an estimate... hopefully this week.
We love this proposed layout right now, and we know it is going to cost a ton of money, but we also know it is the difference between selling this house in the future, and struggling to get it off the market.
With a new baby, this is not a project we are looking to do ourselves (though we will do some demo and install lights and bath fixtures ourselves to save a little bit of money). I'm excited for the possibilities, though - like soundproof green board (if they make that) that will let me sleep soundly when Austin goes to work before the sun rises.
These are the decorating ideas I have for this bathroom: {
pinterest board}. I want it to feel like a spa, and I'm considering using the same tile from the kitchen in here to help tie the house together. Once we put in wood floors (down the line), I don't want to have a myriad of flooring types in the house, so I think this would make it cohesive and feel a little newer, since that's what most builders do now.
Any ideas or suggestions for our sufficiently awkward space, or for easy access to the back yard? Any remodeling on your horizon (with a new baby to boot)?
love,
UPDATE: This is as close to scale as I could get. This is a general idea of what we are planning to do.
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