lkplatow ... important safety information and I never even considered that! I know one thing I had considered was how difficult it must be for plumbers to work on the toilet as the toilet rooms are generally very small.

I guess we're in the minority as we thought just having the toilet in the bathroom was enough privacy. We saw no reason for a separate room with a door for the toilet so our toilet is in a bathroom alcove with no door. Not having a separate toilet room saves on square footage and costs.

I'm not a big fan of toilet rooms - I find them too claustrophopic. I much prefer a half wall, obscuring the person seated on the throne from view (from the chest down, at least), but not enclosing him/her in a small - and apparently, dangerous - space.

this also applies to locking bathroom doors. When i was a teenager I had my first major knee surgery. I was non-weight bearing and trying to take a shower. I ended up slipping and falling and was unable to get up. My pops ended up having to break down the door (it did not have the easily to pick saftey lock). I now never lock the bathroom door.

We're planning a pocket door for our toilet room (it's just in the MBR) so if one of us wants privacy we can slide it shut while still being "accessible".

This is why shower doors must swing outwards.

Same should be true of toilet rooms, apparently.

As to bathroom doors, most brands of privacy locks have an over ride somewhere on the outside knob. Usually work via a tiny screw driver. I keep one above the main bathroom door, on the molding up there, can't be seen from below but easy to reach.

actually, this could happen in any size bathroom if someone passes out close to the door.

in our smaller upstairs guest bath, I had a different problem. I had put my cat in there while movers were here. My cat apparently got mad at being locked up, and proceeded to open every drawer on the vanity in his frustration. problem was, the open drawers blocked me from opening the door since the drawers were on the side of the vanity closest to the door. I could only open the door about 1/4" and it was too narrow to get my fingers in. the only way I could rescue my cat was to get a wire clothes hanger and use the pointy end to push each drawer back in.

silly feline.

In 1996, my 36 year old brother lived at home with my parents. He had not been feeling well for about a week. He had complained about upper back pain and difficulty breathing.

One day my Dad came home from work. The powder room had access to the basement as well as the hallway. The room is barely 5 x5 feet. It is a 1920's home so code was different then.

My dad always enters the house through the basement. Upon arriving at the bathroom door, he could not open it. He finally was able to open it a few inches and saw my brothers back to the door. He was on the floor. My dad could not reach him and ran down in the basement and called 911.

My brother had died while on the toilet due to Deep Vein Thrombosis. ( a blood clot that traveled from the lungs to the heart)

I do not know how the coroner got him out of the room. I do not remember the door being removed or anything.

I did not think of this while building our house. Our toilet room door opens in.

We used pocket doors in the toilet rooms, but I can see this being an issue if someone large passed out in our half bath. In the house I grew up in the smallest bathroom had a door that opened out.

Lsst,
I know it was 11 years ago, but sorry to hear about your brother.

Room doors generally open in. This avoids whacking someone who happens to be walking by. But I'll sure do the opposite on toilet rooms from now on.

Sue36,
Thanks,

He was the best.

lsst

This needs a wider audience! (Along with reminding people of the potential danger of building stairs without landings -- something I never thought about until it was brought up on this forum.)

chisue- just cross posted on the bathrooms forum. Guess they coudl use the info too.

lsst - I am so sorry about your brother - how horrible. My best friend also had DVT and a pulmonary embolism when she was 37. She collapsed at work and the paramedics and doctors worked on her for 45 minutes before getting her back. She survived but suffers lasting memory loss and other brain damage from being deprived of oxygen for so long. She too had been feeling badly for about a week before - a horrible pain in her calf and difficulty breathing. I truly believe they need to publicize the symptoms of DVT and PE more - I think more people would go to the doctor and their PEs could be treated before they became life-threatening if they just knew what their symptoms meant. Sorry to go off on a tangent, but this is one of my hot buttons. Again, I am very sorry about your brother.

I wrote an email to our local "Mr. Fixit" on WGN-radio.

lkplatow,
I appreciate it.

I never gave the fact the room doors opened in until now. The coroner said by the way he fell, he was already dead. The coroner told us even if it had happened on an operating table, doctors could not have saved him.

I am now wondering what if.... it had not been dvt but something where he could have survived if he had immediate medical attention, the fact he was in that small room with no way for someone to get in to immediately help him really bothers me. I had never thought of it that way before this thread.

I have the toilet room with the door swinging in and I have to figure out a better solution if I or one of my family members is in that situation.

lsst, I'm so sorry to hear about your brother's death. My heart goes out to you.

lkplatow thanks for posting this. Never would have thought of that at all. I'm planning a pocket door and I think DH wants a real door (he doesn't like pocket). I think we will have a pocket door now.

chisue what is the thing with stairs and a landing?

lsst - maybe just brief you family on the danger so that when they feel bad they won't close the door. At least that would be a first step. It really isn't hard to change the swing though. Just chisel out the space for the hinges on the other side of the door stop and opposite of current hinge side and drill the hole for the latch. You will have to change which side it swings so you can reuse the door without modifications. Then fill the old with wood putty and paint.

After I wrote the last post I immediately went downstairs and told my husband about this thread . We went into the MB to decide what to do. We did talk about if one of us is real sick, we would not close the door.

We will look into seeing if the door can be an outswing. Right now, if it was an outswing it would run into the shower door.

Thanks for the comments. I think about my brother everyday in little ways but had not thought about all this until this thread. I wish I had thought about this when we built the toilet room.

lyfia -- Especially with higher ceilings requiring a longer run of stairs, an uninterrupted fall all the way down 9, 10, 12 feet could easily kill you. There is code on how deep each stair tread must be and the height of the risers, but I don't know that there's code on how long a run of stairs can be and be considered "safe".

Maybe I'm conditioned to think about these things! In my childhood home, the stairs were in a "U" with two steps up from the foyer to a powder room level landing; ten steps up to a landing leading to a guest suite over the garage; three steps up to the 2nd floor hallway. My mother fell down the ten steps while holding me (as an infant). No broken bones, but when my two front adult teeth came through they had horizontal marks across them. This happened just before Halloween; Mom went to a party dressed as a bum with her sooo realistic black eyes.

Thinking of this just now I recall that the 2nd floor hallway had only a railing w/spindles over the foyer -- a continuation of the stair banister & spindles. I remember once sleepwalking out of my BR and dreaming I was standing at a ship's rail. I don't recall ever sleepwalking before or after that, but in that morning I realized I could have pushed hard enough on that not-terribly-sturdy railing to fall into the foyer.

I guess stair "landings" are called that for a reason!

Thanks chisue, I'm used to one story homes. Figured it was something like that though as it makes perfect sense.