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Bathroom and laundry in a 9x12 space?

9 years ago

I'm buying my first house and it's a house that's in a sad state of disrepair (should be closing in 20 days!!).

The house is 3-bedrooms, 1.5 bath but with an additional attached "mother in law suite" with a large room (18x26) attached to a small kitchenette and then a full bathroom area.

Because the house needs ENTIRELY redone (it's really bad) I am thinking to move into the one-bedroom mother-in-law suite while I work on the rest of the house and thus rennovating the kitchenette and the full bathroom first.

The bathroom is currently set up like this:

You walk in the room (no door from kitchenette) on the very left side of the room. There is 6' of space in front of you and 9' total width. This room has a vanity and what appears to be washer and dryer hookups.

Immediately in front of you (also against the left wall) is a door. Opening this door reveals a small closet in front of you, cramped toliet to your left, and a small shower in the right corner. All are very old and *shudders* I would never use them in their current state.

Because I have to rent a dumpster anyways to clear out some other refuse in the house, I am thinking just to tear down the wall between these two spaces and making it one large room.

This would mean a 9'x12' space with the door on the left side of one of the 9' walls like such

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D-------

I like the idea of keeping laundry in this space so I don't have to go down into the basement of the house to do laundry. Because of the size constraints, a stacked washer and dryer I think would be a great option.

Any thoughts on a good layout of this space? I'm ripping everything out including the floor and there's nothing below this part of the house so I really have full layout options.

In the other parts of the house there is a bathroom with a tub and double vanity and then a half bath that I MIGHT make into a half + shower (it's a 4'x9' space). Here should I put a tub or shower?

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Comments (5)

weedyacres
9 years ago
It would be helpful if you can sketch out the whole space in the MIL suite, with measurements, showing where doors and windows are. Take a photo of your sketch, upload it here, and we'll be able to help you much better.

The short answer is yes, you should be able to fit a bathroom and laundry room in 9x12 space. But how to best do it depends on what you've got to work with.

Is this a DIY or are you hiring contractors?
enduring
9 years ago
You do need to draw up you existing plan and a proposed plan, and have the flexibility to change your proposed plan as you refine it. I have a 8.5x10 foot bathroom that I put in last year. It has a stacked European w/d set (smaller at around 24x23", and not cheap). The w/d should be placed against a load bearing wall from what I was instructed in my installation manual. Otherwise if you get it over the middle of a span of joist it will bounce like a tramploine. Much more force from a front loader with its very high spin rate.
Here are my before and after plans, I stole 4' from a neighboring bedroom. I live in a very small old house with an addition. This remodel took place in the old section. It has always been a well maintained house, so never any structural problems. Full basement below for easy access with plumbing and electric.

Before:

After, where the blue square in upper left hand corner is my stacked W/D:

{{gwi:2132723}}
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Since we are taking resale into consideration, I would finish the laundry area along with the bathroom. What else is in there; water heater, hvac, nothing(I hope)? If it's just a laundry, you have several possibilities. You could frame in the washer/dryer behind bifold doors. You could use folding screens to create a "hallway" to the bathroom door when you have guests. If it's finished space, you could just leave it as a laundry. It *is* in the basement. People will understand. ;^) In my opinion, resale would be enhanced by staying in a finished space as opposed to going from finished-> unfinished-> finished.
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Your sketch dimensions are a bit confusing. In the first one, it looks like the rooms were drawn with 6" per squares, but then the hall doesn't follow that. The second one appears to have a scale of 2' per square and does seem more in proportion, but both are missing a number of dimensions and aren't drawn precisely enough to guess. If you give the dimensions for everything that needs to stay (so exterior walls, plumbing you don't intend to move, etc.), we can try to help you with configuration options. Remember that walls have a thickness ... Bathrooms can be added on a slab, but it requires planning and trenching into the slab to lay the plumbing, so I can understand why you might want to avoid that. It would be helpful to know which parts are on the slab more precisely than the back vs. the front, particularly since I would have thought where you initial suggesting adding the small bath would be in the back ... suzanne, I think what you're referring to is the door between the two rooms.
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Having just sold our home and now beginning to build our next one, we have learned the following from our real estate agent and our home designer. 1) 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms on the second level are ideal for families seeking a two-story home. Each bathroom does not require a tub. As long as one upstairs washroom has a tub, you can remove it from the other washrooms. Could this be a possibility to save you some space? 2) Laundry on the upstairs is ideal as that is where the vast majority of your laundry will come from. Having said that, I have 2nd-floor laundry in my current home and I constantly bringing my baskets down to the main level to fold it while I watch TV. The easier solution would be for me to add a TV to my room but I am too cheap to pay for another cable box ;) 3) For your laundry room, be sure to add a sink and ensure you have cupboards for storage and space for hanging & folding. My current laundry room has a sloped ceiling so I cannot hang anything. I am continually having to put a drying rack in the hallway. Ugh!!
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itltrot
9 years ago
Not to hijack the post but enduring have you ever posted the reveal for this bathroom? I've been watching and haven't seen it.

Back to the OP, Definitely post a sketch of the layout as most of us are visual!
enduring
9 years ago
Itltrot, No I have not. I am stalled out on a bit of tile, and mounting my grab bar in my shower. The bit of tile is integral to the overall look so I did want to finish that to take some pictures. the function of the room is totally up and running. I love my shower. I REALLY love my LAUNDRY setup :)
kats737
9 years ago
I think that our laundry/bath setup is about that size. It is pretty small!

When we moved in, we had a room with a W/D, utility box, and bathroom, all in one room with one entrance.

We gutted the space out, and put up a wall dividing it into two spaces. So to visualize from the lefthand side, there's:

Door opens into W/D stacked
Turn to the right 90* and there is a laundry sink & cabinet above
(Don't even ask how DH hooked up that stacked laundry, and teleported himself out from behind the wall!)

a second door opens into bathroom floor, toilet and sink on one wall, shower on the other. clear curtain has been replaced by a glass door once our budget recovered.

HTH!

Here is a link that might be useful: laundry/bath combo

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