Removing Double Sinks - Bath tub

11 years ago

We are at the planning stage of bathrooms remodeling.

We have 4 bedrooms and three full bathrooms in the house:

1. Hallway bathroom,

It is shared by public rooms (living, dinning family rooms, and kitchen) and two adjacent bedrooms (currently both bedrooms are being used as offices).

The bathroom vanity area is 92 x 68 inches, it has 92 inches long vanity with double sinks. In a compartment, 64 x 68 inches, separated by wall and a pocket door, there is a toilet, and showing/bath tub.

We want to remove the wall and pocket door to make the bathroom more spacious.

2. Guest bathroom

It is accessed only through guest bedroom. The vanity area is 104 x 60 inches, it has a 104 inches long vanity with double sinks. In a compartment, 60 x 63 inches, separated by wall and a pocket door, there is a toilet, and shower/bath tub.

We are debating if we should remove the wall and pocket door.

3. Master bathroom

It is inside of master bedroom. The Vanity (108 inches long) has double sinks.

There is a huge, deep bathtub that we hate it with passion. We have never even used it once since moving into this house. The tub area is 84 X 40 inches.

By the tub area, there is a very small separate shower, we do not like it too. The shower area is only 45 X 40 inches.

Next to the shower/tub/vanity area is a separate compartment, 73 X 36 inches, with a toilet. There is one door opens to the back yard, and another door opens to the shower/tub/vanity area.

Both doors can be locked from inside. We want to keep both doors, since the set up is very convenient for anyone who works in the yard and wants to use toilet.

We are shower persons. DH and I use a different bathroom so one sink in a bathroom has never been a problem for us.

If it is up to us, we want to remove all the tubs and double sinks, only have one sink and one shower in each bathroom. We like bathroom with clean, streamline and uncluttered look.

We know our decision could be bad for re-sell since we heard over and over again that we should keep at least one tub in the house. If so, we are not sure which bathroom should we keep a tub. We wonder by removing bath tub, would we reduce the value (perceived or real value) of the house?

Could you please chime in with your comments? Especially if you have removed tub and double sinks from your old bathrooms, do you ever regret that?

Thank you in advance for your response.

Featured Answer

desertsteph

11 years ago

I also would just keep a tub in the hall bath and put in 2 larger showers in the other 2.

shorten at least 2 of the vanities and put in a floor to ceiling storage cabinet. lots of drawers.

For the layout you could draw the bathrooms as is on graph paper and post here (1 per thread) and let people here see what ideas they can come up with. Always lots of good ideas here.

If you are ok with keeping plumbing types where they are it would save a lot on the cost of it all.

Picking styles, colors etc would be a personal choice. But many here can and like to help with those also.

Comments (9)

dekeoboe
11 years ago
We wonder by removing bath tub, would we reduce the value (perceived or real value) of the house?

This is going to depend on your location. Your best bet would be to ask several realtors in your area. Also, you might want to reconsider your idea to remove the wall in the hallway bathroom. This wall with a door is desired by those with children as it would allow more than one child to use the hallway bathroom at a time.
kmcg
11 years ago
Since you have 3 bathrooms that sound quite large, I would leave a tub in one of them and then do exactly what you want in the other 2 bathrooms.

Whoever designed your house sure did love the long vanities! I'm stunned by those measurements. It could look a little odd to have counters that long with just one sink, so I would consider adding tall storage cabinets (if you could use more storage) alongside a shorter length countertop/vanity.

As for one or two sinks, I'm building our new main bath with just one, because I like to have counter space to spread out on. That's fine for the way we live - my husband and I never need to be in the bathroom getting ready at the same time. Nor did my kids ever have a problem sharing a single sink in our previous house. But some people would refuse to buy a house that had just one sink in the master bath. I don't think there's any one right answer for this.
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lazypup
11 years ago
Removing the fixtures is not a problem, however, the plumbing codes require all permanent residential structures to have a minimum of one bathtub.
dekeoboe
11 years ago
lazypup - Which plumbing code? I have never been able to find the direct reference.
azmom
Original Author
11 years ago
dekeoboe, kmcg, and lazypup, thank you so much for the responses.

I think we will keep bathtub in the master bathroom and in one of the two other bathrooms.

kmcg, yes, we plan to shorten countertop, and add a storage cabinet with drawers and a "garage door" to hide small appliances, such as hair dryer. This is an idea I learned from this forum.

May I ask if you design your bathroom yourself, or hire a bathroom designer?

We have never remodeled before. I feel rather overwheelmed. We are not sure what right steps we should take to get things done.

I posted "Step to take for remodeling? Need advice please!" in Remodeling forum with many questions, could you please share your insight? Thank you again.
lazypup
11 years ago
Both the National Model plumbing codes, UPC & IRC, and all the state codes I ever encountered in my mere 30 years in the trade.
kmcg
11 years ago
azmom - I designed my own bathroom, and I have to say, it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be! We were changing the whole shape of the room, but wanted to keep it really small to preserve space in the adjacent bedrooms. What finally helped was when I drew a to-scale room plan and cut out shapes for the shower, vanity, toilet, etc. I just kept moving them around and changing length of vanities until I got something I liked. So far, it's looking good, but we haven't started using it yet.
dekeoboe
11 years ago
lazypup - can you site the verbiage from the code? I am not trying to be difficult, I just can't seem to find it on my own.

I know the plumbing codes also require a pre-slope for a shower, but NC did not adopt that section of the code and neither did my county, so it is not required here. Just an example of something being in the code, but still not required.

Removing Double Sinks - Bath tub

desertsteph

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