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Help me renovate my bathroom closet

14 years ago

I was inspired by bathroom closet photos on another thread to seek help from the greater GW community. We have a typical 1950 bathroom: peach tile, solid old tub, tile floor (on slab) and closet with access to tub/shower plumbing.

The closet currently holds the water heater. The w/h can be relocated to an adjacent utility closet. If we move the w/h, how to handle the space? The closet's framed opening is 30" W; the closet interior is 34" W. Closet is 34" D to front of door framing; 28"D inside of framing. We removed a full height, folding, louvered door for painting and, 2 years later, still have a curtain in its place. Time to deal with this!

Two problems:

1. closet is wide: use 2 doors or leave open?

2. Floor tile does not extend into the closet. Short of retiling entire bathroom floor, what can we do?

Floor view, with curtain

Tension rod view(!)

Behind the curtain. See uneven tile line. Looks like the doorway was widened at some point?

Water piping leads into adjacent utility closet, through the wall down there...

And reappears here (white plastic piping under air handler)

And goes across room to this set-up

Which makes me think the w/h must have been in here originally. Perhaps had to be relocated to bathroom closet when the enormous old air handler was installed (we replaced it in 2006).

Thoughts?

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Comments (4)

madtown_2006_gw
14 years ago
Hi again Abby! I forgot to mention before that I found some inspiration pics online, I'd post them here but I think one is from a GW poster and I don't have their name so I'd feel bad posting a pic. Anyway, put "linen cabinet" or similar variations (I think I also did built-in cabinet and maybe bathroom cabinet) into Google Images and see what you get!
abbycat9990
Original Author
14 years ago
Anything?
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I imagine there is a design principle that would serve as a guide as to how long a shower can be without looking odd. Unfortunately, I don't know where to find that information! Maybe someone else on this forum can help with that. My current linen closet (in the hallway) is 24" wide but due the framing of the door, the opening is only 17" wide. It is not very functional, IMHO. I recently built a new floor to ceiling closet in the master bedroom with sliding shoji doors (still waiting for the doors to be built). I included an 18" wide linen 'closet' and the space is totally accessible - much better design. Additionally, the shelves are on drawer runners because the closet is 24" deep and being able to slide out the shelves makes it much easier to get to that towel in the back! So, I suggest you take a good hard look at your linen situation and try to picture yourself actually getting things out and putting them away. From there you should be able to come up with a good solution. From someone who is on a mission to enlarge her house by getting rid of stuff!
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slateberry
14 years ago
What are your goals for the closet? That might shake some posters out of the trees.

Personally, I'd do double doors, maybe even split half way up, so you have upper and lower double doors. OK, while I'm dreaming, bottom half would be a laundry bin. Top half storage.

The way the tile is cut is problematic. AO may be able to get you a similar color in octagon and dot. Otherwise, what about buying white octagon and dot, then painting with color-matched epoxy paint before you grout? Alternatively, a clever threshold (clever because It would have to project out a bit into the room bc of that unfortunate tile cut) could bridge the space into the closet. You could get the threshold made out of anything that looks simpatico to your overall bath; marble is common, or black granite, travertine, painted or stained wood (easier to shape and cut into place!). If you did that, no need to match tile for the closet floor. In that case I'd get floor paint and paint the closet floor a color that gets along with your tile.

I have a closet in my bath and the depth makes it difficult to get full use of the space in it. We use a lot of bins and trays, so we can pull them out and get what we want, or access less frequently used items stored behind them.

That tile, by the way, is a beautiful, distinctive color. It may be harder to work with than many of the white tile bathrooms you see here, but I hope you keep it. It looks great! (And best of all, it doesn't look like a million other bathrooms.)
abbycat9990
Original Author
14 years ago
slateberry51 - Thanks for the input. I like the idea of double doors, and also of making the lower half a laundry hamper area... Maybe also a vacuum storage area. Hmm...

Yes, we'll have to come up with a creative threshold. In all the other closets in the house, there is a raised wooden floor, like in this just-before-we-moved-in photo:

I've been thinking that's our solution. Just build it to protrude a little from the door frame, and that will cover the weird tile line.

I'd love to see photos from other bathrooms!

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