FYI - I have thought about putting a plantation shutter with a fixed louver and leaving it where it is. I could also do a half bath with access to the playroom or hall and a smaller bath for the bedroom. I do want the bedroom bath to be ensuite though . . .

What height is the toilet you're using? Could you maybe get one of those lowprofile/short toilets? Here's a link to a forum thread on this very topic with some toilet suggestions...

I like the idea of the plantation shutter, but I'd leave the louvers operable so he can let the light in when not in use. Hope this helps!

Here is a link that might be useful: Short Toilet Thread

Hmm, it's strange the architect did that.

How do feel about leaving it as is and using a top down shade. Either a bamboo shade or fabric roman shade. You can also get those stick on things that make glass appear frosty.

I think I'd leave it as is and put in a plantation shutter or some sort of window treatment there. I don't think it's worth changing up the floor plan when you have it as you like it

If you don't mind having a pocket door from playroom into the bath, MAYBE you could do something like this...

Personally, I'd just go with the permanently closed plantation shutter over the bottom half of the window as suggested by previous posters. But I wanted to try and give you another option in case the thought of having the toilet in front of the window like that really bugged you.

I think the plantation shutter is a good idea, then you can leave the toilet as is. Have you ever considered making the bedroom closet smaller (maybe bookcases or built-in cabinets on the playroom side) and having only one door to the bathroom...maybe something like this?

You could make the vanity a little smaller, too, and add a linen storage/shelves between the door and the vanity. This would give you a lot more room, when using the sink.

Your son would still have his privacy, with a door to the hall or a door to the bathroom/playroom area. Just an idea :)

Wow, sorry this is so messy...I'm having scanner problems. The crayon is the only way to sometimes get it to read the page! LOL

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Thank you all for the ideas! My son (age 8) and I were out in the yard last night with me trying to convince him that you couldn't see in with the plantation shutters, even at night, when they were tilted but not closed. He was not convinced :).

I talked to the builder this morning and he said the problem is the header height in the dormer is 7'10" instead of the 9' of the ceiling. I am going to talk to the architect and see if he or his draftsperson can either raise the height in the dormer or change the window to a shorter window (casement maybe since that would make more sense with the rest of the double hungs than a shorter double hung). We just need about 10-12 more inches for the toilet to fit below. 32 inches above the floor would be ideal but 30 would work with a low profile toilet and still allow the moulding to be shown.

Hopefully this will work. If not, your ideas are great :) Love this forum!

I imagine that using the plantation shutters would have a disadvantage in making it hard to clean the window & sill, reaching in behind the toilet like that. I think you should try for one of the alternative toilet locations suggested by the others, & it will be a good spot for a laundry hamper.

Good point about the cleaning! It would never be able to be cleaned . . . I guess it will have to be changed. Not a fan of the toilet perpendicular to the shower . . . It looks like it will need a total reworking if we can't get the dormer redesigned to handle either a smaller window or a taller ceiling!

I thought about putting the bathroom in the closet ( it is roughly 5 x 8 so won't be big but functional) and putting the closet where the vanity is. It does have a clipped ceiling on one side but the ceiling is 6'9" so tall enough for a hanging rod. I would then put a half bath in the shower/closet area opening to the hall. That leaves a weird dormer area where I could do a window seat or I could incorporate the dormer into the closet which is also weird but would look fine from outside and inside - just weird when you are in the closet!!!

You can always switch to a wall mount toilet with a flush-o-meter valve eliminating the tank completely.

There are also very short toilets with more complicated 'power flush' mechanisms )often a pressure bladder in the tank to provide a better flush with less water).

I'm not sure raising the header height would be a good idea (even if do-able) because that will change the way the top of that window lines up with the top of the rest of your windows.

How about if you have the dormer framed so that it is about 10 to 12 inches less deep and the roof wraps AROUND the bottom of the dormer a little bit? Right now you have the dormer wall lining up with the first floor exterior wall and the roof doesn't wrap around the dormer. I think reframing would give you a more traditional dormer window anyway. (Google "dormer window" and you'll see what I mean.)

Then, because you won't have quite so much dormer wall space to fill, you could replace the full height double hung window with a half-height one... exactly the same size as the top half of your other windows. Keep the header at the same height so the the half-height window still lines up with the rest of the 2nd floor windows. This would make your son happy b/c he could still look out (well, once he grows tall enough) but he would know that no one could look in and see him. AND it would look like you planned things this way all along.

Reframing the dormer should be a minor amount of carpentry and, while these are very rough revisions, here is what I think your elevation and bathroom could wind up looking like.

You make an excellent point about the windows lining up. I wonder about the half window and whether that will look strange? The thing about double hungs is that if you switch the proportions around, they look weird to me.

I wonder if a casement would be better. We have casements in other areas (over the master bath to the far left on the front and over the kitchen sink). I think if I could get a casement that would work and still have the vertical lights (not a fan of casements with horizontal lights) that might be fine. The other issue is where the dormer lines up with the brick if we continue the dormer that breaks the roofline.

A 2'8" x 3'6" casement would be a perfect size from a toilet perspective. It would give us 36" or a little more and might even be the same size as the fixed glass window in the elevation (it is shorter than the double hung one specified). It would also be the same width so the windows would be in proportion. Not sure the lights would be vertical though.

What do you think about that?

Also, I just looked at the new elevation and the dormer doesn't line up with the rest of the windows, and actually it looks fine because it is a dormer and the house switches from two stories to 1 1/2 stories.

Tried to convert the new elevation to pdf and keep getting an error but here is a close up of the window area as it is now. You can see it doesn't really line up at all with the rest of the windows . . .

That closeup helps me see what you have now.

Frankly, I think it would look better if the roof wrapped across in front of the dormer and you only had a half-sized window there. The way it is now looks funny to me. I'm not sure I've ever seen a dormer quite like that before.

I don't know where you're getting your windows from but, if you talk with them, I suspect you'll find that you can get an awning window that is exactly the size of the upper half of your double-hungs and they CAN also put vertical "lites" in it that match those in the top half of your other windows.

Most windows these days have "simulated divided lites" anyway and you can have them put in where-ever you want them. Nobody does real divided lites anymore. Too much opportunity for air and water leakage. A casement with vertical simulated-divided-lites might be considered a "custom" window instead of a standard size - but hopefully ONE custom window won't break the bank. And if it'll make DS happy....

I don't think a half-sized window would look odd at all in that spot. It looks like you're also not putting a pediment over that one window or shutters around it. So it is going to be different from the others anyway. It'll look great as long as it blends stylistically with them. I think making it the same size as the upper HALF of your double-hungs and having the same "lites" will make it blend in quite nicely. Just be sure you specify that you want the casement window to have the same dimensions as the upper sash of your double-hungs and have the same lite pattern.

Those sorts of dormers are pretty common around here, actually - or at least in Atlanta where I grew up. Neil Reid (a prominent Atlanta architect from the 1920s or so) used them a lot and there is a very prominent Atlanta architect, Bill Harrison, that uses quite a bit - they have become sort of a trademark of his. In fact, a beautiful house designed by another Atlanta architect called Peter Block used them on this house which was in a magazine and in the Things that Inspire blog post below.

That dormer style is less colonial looking and I am concerned about putting a colonial looking dormer on a more french inspired house with flared rafter tails, etc. I just don't care for the proportion of the half window - looks like a half window and is wider than it is long - but a longer casement may work as in the below picture. Either that or raising the header and placing the dormer higher on the roof like a traditional dormer.

As far as the windows go, we are using Kolbe and the the 2'8" x 3'6" casement is standard (although more expensive than a double hung) and it does have the vertical lights. I think that is why I don't like the half window - everything else is so horizontal (long french doors, long casements, etc) and putting a vertical rectangle in throws me off!

I'll see what our architect comes up with!

Here is a link that might be useful: Peter Block painted brick house