Hi seedsilly-

On first glance it looks like it will feel cramped and bottlenecked at the door when you enter, as you'll have to pass between the corner of the vanity and the toilet. But I'd like to draw it out to scale and look at it. Can you give actual dimensions? Also do you already have any of these things (vanity, table for next to vanity, closet parts, etc) or can they all be "anything"...

Stacey,
The room will be 9x11'4". The vanity is all that we have purchased so far. It is 68x19, but I am thinking of building a 3 inch wide cabinet (think headboard with storage compartments) to increase the depth, as well as create more space for plumbing so we don't lose so much drawer space (it's a dresser being converted to a vanity). In my drawing I have it as 68 by 22.

I see what you're saying, maybe the vanity and table need to move closer to the window wall.

Don't have the table yet, don't have closet parts yet, don't have tub or toilet yet, basically, we just have the vanity.

Thanks!

What part of the bathroom is the "new" space? What's the existing layout (so I can see what plumbing will be moving)?

When I get home from work Ill try to post a layout showing what the bathroom looks like now. For now, Ill see if I can explain it in writing.

FYI the top of the drawing is North.

Current bathroom extends from the South end of the drawing up, and it is 7 feet North to South. Width will not change, it is 9 feet East to west.

The toilet in the prospective bathroom drawing is accurate (ie actual current location with no plans to move it) for the current bath, as are the doors accurate. However, the door on the Northwest corner is currently a small closet in the master bedroom.

The top four feet of the prospective bath is currently 2 separate closets. One in the master bedroom, the other (the northeast corner) is a closet in the playroom (family room).

The current sink is about 24" wide, it is to the left of the toilet.
The shower: imagine yourself on the throne and if you have really long legs, then you easily touch the shower door, which extends the remainder of the space from about one 1/2 feet North of the toilet, to the closet walls.

As I said, Ill try to post a visual later today.
Thanks! Amy

Here's the entire second floor. Many of these walls are knee walls (hope I'm using the correct term) where the wall is perpendicular to the floor for about 5 feet then in angles in following the roof line. So, in the bathroom, the North wall, where the closets currently are, is a knee wall.

Amy

Boy, that landing takes up a lot of real estate, doesn't it?

Yes, and it's difficult to figure out what we can do with it. It's "Full" of knee walls. I swear we have 6,000 roof lines on our house. I'm thinking we can build some closets up there, but none of them will be full height. It feels like wasted space at this point. Any ideas!?!

My husband has this crazy idea to put a skylight in the roof above the landing, then open up the landing some, which would bring much needed light into the main floor foyer(lots of trees in the front of the house) but I think that is too crazy.

We've tried to think of ways to extend the bathroom into the landing to preserve the bedroom and family room closets, but I don't think that is doable either. For one, we'd for sure have to move the toilet then!

I'm looking at this more and think the landing needs to be utilized somehow, and all I can really think of is storage. I don't have a lot of closet space, so maybe this would be the place to do that. Not a lot of space that I can see, but sometimes a little can go a long way.

Any thought on closets?

Any thoughts on the bathroom layout other than possibly a bottle neck issue?

Thanks, Amy

It's hard to see what to do with the landing space without a roof plan. But I agree it makes sense to use the space better... Do you have a roof plan, or photos of the space? Obviously, any changes there will affect your bathroom layout.

Where is the plumbing stack?

Considering how much square footage you are adding it is still a problematic layout. There is enough square footage to have one full, one 3/4 baths, so there should be plenty of space for one full.

What about running the vanity along the top of the plan with a window between the two sinks and built in storage to make up the rest of the width? That would eliminate that bottleneck and the hamper and the freestanding table could be placed along the wall where you show the vanity.

You could also swing the MBR door against the foot of the tub, an outswing into the bedroom at that location is awkward.

I would consider a narrow partition to shield the toilet. There is a view of it unless the door is 99.99% closed. You could do a partition and change the doorswing so that it swung against the partition, although that is the slightly backward European way of swinging a door (into a room instead of into the corner).

Thanks for the ideas!

I don't have a roof plan. I've played around some with my BHG roof planner, but have no clue how to do our crazy house. I think it is probably reasonable to say that we will not be making any changes in the upstairs landing afterall. Well, we might add some closets, but nothing that would really affect the bathroom layout. The landing, for what it's worth, has a knee wall on the east and west wall, and has some sort of dropped ceiling above the "hall" directly below (south) of the bathroom.

Palimpsest, I don't really know for sure what you mean. I'm guessing the problematic part of the layout is the bottle neck? I can certainly eliminate the little table above the vanity, I just threw that in for a little more counter space essentially. I measured our first floor bathroom, which is essentially the same as my prospective 2nd floor layout (almost identical but flipped, the vanity is in the same position in relation to the toilet, but the 1st floor bathroom is more narrow). We don't have a problem with that space, no bottle neck issues. Guess we're just used to it.

As far as the bathroom door swinging out into the MBR, we are used to that too! It's and old, weird house. Easy enough to fix though.

Plumbing stack: I don't know what or where that is! Is that related to venting? DH says our house is "minimally" vented. There is a metal duct of some sort on the landing, were the bathroom wall extends and makes the 45 degree angle to the playroom door. Maybe that is it? However, we were told that was for the old water heater, and is probably no longer doing anything. But I don't know.

Interesting idea to put a window between the two vanities, do you mean sort of like this?

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Here's another idea, although it involves moving the toilet, so costs would be higher, as I'm not sure if DH can do that by himself. I have no idea what it entails.

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Yes your first new drawing is just what I was thinking.

The partition next to the toilet may have to be just that,--a narrow partition instead of a wall, because of clearance around the toilet. Or it may not be able to extend all the way to the front edge of the toilet but be set back a little.

The plumbing stack is the big cast iron pipe that goes vertically through the house draining the fixtures, and then (usually) continues to the roof as a smaller pipe to vent sewer gases and allow some air flow (so drains don't gurgle like pouring something out of a can).

It is recommended that a toilet be no further than three feet from a vertical stack since it is draining..um, solids, while other fistures can be up to ten feet since they need a smaller diameter drain for just water.

I vote for the plan with the sinks by the window. That give you great counter space. I have seen a few bathrooms where one of the sinks has a window instead of a mirror.

Yeah, I like the vanity along the exterior wall, too. It feels more cohesive than your first plan.

Moving the toilet can be easy, or a gigantic PITA. Depends on when the house was built (old lead drain pipes? or pvc?) and where the stack and vents are, and which way the joist bays run. You don't want to be drilling huge holes through 8 perpendicular joists in order to move the toilet. Then you will have to get into engineering issues of joist strength. But it you're moving it and you can run the drain pipe along the same joist bay its already in, without cutting any, AND you can tie into existing vents, it might work. As palimpset said there are strict code requirements about how far the drains of each fixture must be from the main stack before they need to be vented. We had to add a few new vents in our new layout. i'm assuming there is a finished room below this, so your drain pipes are between a floor and ceiling, right?

FWIW, we DIY-ed all the supply line plumbing, and installing the actual traps at each fixture drain, but we did hite a plumber to come and do the initial rough DWV layout. i.e. he made the new connections to the stack, ran drain pipes at the correct pitch to the new locations stub ins, and installed the new vents tieing into the existing roof vent. It was SOOOOOO worth the $850 to have him figure all these lengths and pitches out and install them properly. Imagine how awful if we'd miscalculated these things and then when the bathroom was all finished (tile installed, etc) we found that the toilet wouldn't flush properly or tub not drain right! We'd done the DWV ourselves on a previous bathroom and it was a huge headache.

But for planning purposes at the very least, you can find these distances and pitch requirements on line or in books like "Ultimate Guide to Plumbing" and "The Complete Guide to Plumbing" from Home Depot, etc.

Have you thought about the tub as you've shown it, re: open end or closed? I believe that a 2-sided tub as you've shown it is a lot more $$ (although around here we can get gorgeous refurbished antique cast iron ones like that sometimes.) and your shower curtain will need to be a 2-sided bar. I like it open on 2 sides as you've shown, but be aware of the cost issues (over a regular alcove tub).

Well, I know you said you don't want to move walls in the landing area. But I had to think it through. It just seems like if you're doing all this work to make a nice bathroom, and there's all that extra unused space out there......... maybe you could use some?

This first one looks ideal but your rooflines might prohibit it. I moved the family room door to an extension of its south wall, rather than the 45 degree wall it now has. And moved the bathroom south wall down 3 feet. But you'd need to move the master bedroom door into the attic zone as shown in order to really see benefit from it. However, that gives you a MUCH bigger bathroom space, maybe even room for a separate shower and tub if that's in the budget....

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If you do the other stuff but don't move the master door, I'm not sure it gains you much. I;d hoped that the toilet could just shift south 3 feet in its own little nook, but 9 feet isn't wide eonough for that... you need 3 feet for each doorway zone, plys 10" for the 2 walls, plus 34-36" for the toilet zone. Plus, I don't love opening a door into a room and being in a little "hall" like that. It feels nicer to open into a wider space.... but here's that:

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Palimpsest, thanks for the info on plumbing stack. Now you see why we'd rather not move the toilet, cuz I didn't even know what that is, and still don't know where it is. I think I know where it is in the basement, but don't know where it would be on the second floor. If it is straight up and down, then it's not within 3 feet of the toilet. I bet it's below that other duct I talked about, and that is about 5 feet from the toilet. That is, if we have one. Our old house breaks all the rules. Original foundation is 1880, has been added on to several times. We think the latest addition was in the 60's. The City's records do not go back that far, so they are not able to shed any light. I do know that we have some gurgling in our pipes.

Debrak, thanks for the vote! I'll have to see if I can find pictures, as I can't quite visualise it. It seems like too small of a space to put a window (can't change vanity dimensions, already have it) Any idea where you've seen the pictures so I can try to focus my search? Guess it could be a very small window, just to give us a hint of light and be able to know what the weather is like. Or there's skylights/light tubes for light.

Stacey, I really appreciate the info on moving a toilet. This is an old house, with old galvanized pipes (we've updated a lot of them since we moved in). We already plan to add more joists, since we're adding a tub and heavy tile flooring.

I like the drawing ideas, but I'm afraid we can't do that. Even the attic has rooflines in it. Yes, plural roof lines! So we can't put a door to the bedroom. At one time we dreamed of making the attic a big walk in closet. Our neighbor who is a contracter said its possible, but very expensive, as the roofs are essentially load bearing I think. Like I said, this house has been added on to several times! I think it used to be an old frontier home, the ones that are very narrow and rather long. Whoever added on, decided to change the direction of the house I think, and therefore changed the rooflines, added dormers, it's kind of strange, really. Our roofer said he had never seen anything like it. My latest thought is to maybe build a wall running along the staircase in the landing, then add some built in closets. Or, just put closets on the east and west walls.

Thank you again, Stacey, for taking the time to look at my landing layout, very sweet of you! I'm sorry on my levels that we can't use some of those ideas. It's a big house and there's only 3 of us, but it still seems like we should try to maximise our space, if nothing else, for resale value. Some future buyer might have more then one kid!

So, if we put our vanity on the top (North) of the bathroom, where do I put a linen closet? On top of one side of the vanity extensions, or would that look funny? (see second picture on my Tue, Jan 26, 10 at 21:55 post)

Thanks everyone! Any more thoughts?

I am currently looking at a house that has a large landing like this, and the steps to the third floor are at a 90 degree angle to those from the 1st-2nd. Technically, the house loses a bedroom, but compared to other houses that have the conventional hall and parallel stairs all the way up, there is a much more graceful transition to the other rooms. The third floor hall is rather mean and unpleasant in the house, and if it was that way on the second, the house wouldnt be nearly as attractive.

Its one positive way of looking at 'wasted space' in an old house ... it is huge for a landing, but more graceful than a 5 foot square with a bunch of doors, or a skinny dark hallway lined with doors.

Palimpsest, I see your point and I think I agree. While the old paneling, orange carpet and 2x4 suspended ceiling tiles are outdated and in need of replacement, it still has a cozy, "Hey come lay on the floor" quality to it. And we do that sometimes, to play with the doll house or gather round a laptop, but not often.

But here's an issue I forgot about, I don't think I can really put the vanity on the top wall on my layout, due to the knee wall.

Back to the drawing board. One of these days I'm afraid I'll give up and just not do anything!

Maybe I'll need to close up the door to the MBR, that might give us a few more options.

But how were you going to put the window in that wall in your first plan?

Well, I may have forgotten about the knee wall then too. Since that wall is in two closets I never use, I tend to forget the details of their configuarations. But, I think a person could do a low window. Not very well above a vanity, however. Unless I did a really small one. It would have to be 20 inches or so tall, max. Then again, it is light I am after, not view, so maybe other options would be better? I don't know, I'm lost. But here are some new ideas.

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Do you need the tub? I'd assumed so from your first plan, but now see the big shower shown above.

Couple thoughts:
Can you narrow down what your most dear desires are? Like, how important is the door from the master? Is there another tub elsewhere you can use (or for resale needs?) and if so do you want to do a fab shower instead? What about closets.... you're taking them away from the master and family room... where will you put all that stuff, should at least some closet space be a part of the plan? Window-wise... you will need to look at your eaves. Even if the interior wall goes up, say, 5 feet before angling in, there may be an eave that is lower on the exterior that precludes putting a window in... it would be good to know for these initial design purposes. Finally, can you define what you want this bathroom to be? Is it a nice retreat for the parents, or a hard-working bathroom for the whole family (how many?), etc.

Window-wise, if you can't put one in the wall, and you do put a tub over there, how about a skylight over the tub?

How high ARE the knee walls and which walls are they on. That will of course also affect placement of fixtures.

I probably value function over form. My wish list fluctuates rapidly, especially if I see a layout that looks sensible, easy, and inexpensive, then suddenly that layout becomes interesting to me. Of course then I start thinking about what I'd miss out on and swing wildly the other direction. But, in the end, function will win over form. In other words, a layout that works well will turn my head more then a really cool shower or tub idea, and will cause me to give up my silly fantasies. I'm a practical gal. Usually.

Below is a list of wants and needs. The needs are bolded.

longish double vanity: high importance, and already have

6' soaker tub: I have considered moving away from this idea, as there is a tub on the first floor that could be replaced some day with a cozy soaker. However, it seems to make more sense that if you're going to have a big tub, to have it off the MBR, or am I wrong on that? If I could only do a 5'tub upstairs, I would skip it altogether I think.

large separate shower done in tile with some sort of wood integrated in the design: gave up the idea of a separate shower long ago, gave up the idea of the wood too.

nice tile on floors: I have purchased tile that I like, but I wouldn't call it nice ;)

window and or suntube/skylight: high importance to me, but budget is a big factor as can be costly for materials and since this would not be DIY as everything else will be. Might be best to think in terms of a design that would allow us the flexibility to add the window/skylight at a later date. It's very dark on the second floor, and I don't like that. Well, bedrooms I like dark, the rest I do not. I should put the bathroom in my daughter's room, it's the only room that gets lots of sun. Just kidding.

toilet in a toilet room or privacy wall: gave up that idea

door to the bedroom: more important to DH then to me, and he is flexible on that

room for a linen closet of sorts: high importance, but does not need to be real big. Big enough for towels and bathroom supplies.

As to your other questions:
The other two closets do not have much in them, so they are not a big issue. We will want some closet space on the landing, but don't need a whole lot. 3' long and deep enough for a hanger would suffice.

Eaves on North side of house: not a problem for windows. Compared to the other sides of the house, it is very uncomplicated and practically a blank slate, save a few windows on the first floor, none on second floor.

The knee walls are 5' before they angle in. The only knee wall in the bathroom will be on the northside of the bath. I think that would complicate things in terms of a vanity on that wall, mostly for the fact of hanging mirrors and for built in vanities, which I'd rather not have on an outside wall. I'm fairly confidant the knee walls will not be a big issue in terms of having a shower running along the knee wall, DH who is taller then me does not feel it will be an issue for him. Worst case scenario, we could build in some sort of a shelf that would push the tub/shower further into the room and therefore decrease the impact of the knee wall, but I don't think that will be necessary. We would probably get a curved curtain rod to open things up a little.

Can I define what I want the bathroom to be? No, I can't! Well, I can tell you this. I want it at least a little bigger, I want new surfaces everywhere (everything is very old), and I want the space used wisely. It will be a "working" bathroom, not just an adult retreat. If it had a big tub or a "fab" shower, that part of it would feel like a retreat to me, but those things would also get used by our 6 yo. Right now we all 3 get ready at the same time in the first floor bathroom. Once we redo the upstairs bathroom, I have an idea we will all 3 get ready in there together. Its kind of become family time to us. However, what we do now works well in that we shower (alone :) )in the upstaris bathroom, then do the finishing touches together in the downstairs. Not sure how we'll manage the privacy aspect once we start getting ready upstairs. Well, we usally shower before DD gets up, so maybe that will be fine. But maybe I need to consider a private shower area! Eek! Another thing I hadn't thought of! When my daughter gets older, I'm guessing she'll prefer to get ready downstairs, away from us. Or maybe we'll get ready downstairs and her upstairs, hard to say.

As far as the layouts I just posted, DH is drawn to the one with the shower running along the kneewall, with the vanity at the lower left, and the angled storage joining the two. For some odd reason, I kind of like the one that is the same layout but considerable shorter in that it leaves the closets in tack, and eliminates the possibility of a window. I think to an extent I get overwhelmed and just go for easy. Especially since we will be doing the work ourselves, and we've never done a bathroom before.
However, the wet room is an attractive idea, but the cost and labor is daunting.

Thanks again for your interest, I really appreciate the help, and sorry about the really long post!

Amy

Hmmm. I would recommend that you and DH might want to build a sort of cardboard mock-up of a tub/shower against the kneewall, to stand in it and fee what it feels like to shower there (if you're considering your second plan with tub/shower along the kneewall). Perhaps you can tape a piece of cardboard at the correct height/angle over your downstairs tub, and stand in it?

We sometimes stay at a friend's summer camp that has a similar tub/shower under a slanted ceiling. It is very very uncomfortable to shower in it, you have to crouch or sit down to do so. Perhaps your roof has a much steeper pitch, but it might be worth trying it out as you consider layout possibilities. REmember that your tub floor will probably be a bit higher than the normal floor, too, which will decrease headroom further.

Don't get discouraged! I had some depressing moments when we were trying to figure out the layout for our bathroom reno. At times it seemed it just wasn't gonna work. but it did! And its great, despite the compromises we made. It's great that you're going through all these possibilities now. At some point one of them will feel more right than the others, and you'll be on your way.

Unless they are very tall, most people cannot lie "passively" in a 6 foot tub. Lie against the backrest, your legs float and you slide down the back rest and your head goes underwater. Try it. You either have to dig your feet in or rest your arms on the sides, out of the water, getting cold.

In a five foot tub, people's toes tend to touch the other end which is just enough to keep you in place. Better to go with a conventional length with a deeper "well" than longer.

We've spent time in the closets getting a feel for headroom. I do plan a mock up, figured I'd do a curtain on a rod and everything to mock a shower. And yes, it's a steeply pitched roof. Wonder if we could set the tub directly on the joists and tile/subfloor around it? Our 1st floor tub is done like that, but maybe the tub was specifically designed to be able to do that.

In my 5 foot tub my toes do more then touch the other end. My knees are high in the air. When I say six feet, I mean total length of the tub, not the interior space. But I'll give it more thought.

Thanks again for the input!!

You may want to consider a deep 5'6" tub before jumping to 6'0. :)

I'm taking a look at 66" tubs, thanks for the advice.

Meanwhile, how about this layout? This is assuming we can find the bucks to move the toilet, and the doors will need to be shifted some, but doors are easy enough.

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