caligirl - yeah, i hear ya on the toilet. Our house is over 100 years old, so pretty sure the standards for spacing wouldn't even be possible to accomplish in our tiny space. Lol! We are used to it, so it's really not a big deal for us. I'm not sure of exact measurements on either side of the toilet, but it's not too awful. It's not spacious, but it's not the worst. In comparison to many other homes in our little town, this is considered a large second bathroom! When we went house hunting 10 years ago, we really wanted to be close to the college my husband works at since it's a beautiful neighborhood, and that means older homes like ours. And about 90% of the ones we looked at had sub-optimal layouts for bathrooms or kitchen (and often both). As quirky and annoying as some of this is, it's actually a far step above some of the awful things we had as alternative options when we bought. There's basically 3 choices in our town - 100+ year old victorian with wonky renovations or bad layouts that need fixing, 1970s homes that are horribly dated and in less than desirable neighborhoods, or really overpriced brand new mcmansions. :-/ Or building new, I suppose. Here's a 2nd floor layout. I'm going to be straight to the point: we really don't want to take on a massive project that changes the footprint and walls of our second floor in order to perfect our bathroom. If it was just me? Sure. I'm up for anything. But I know my husband well enough to know he hates change and he would never go for it. I have a hard enough time convincing him to paint a room, I can't imagine he could visualize, let alone approve, that kind of change. Lol! Things that may be helpful to know about the rest of our house: we have a 3rd floor attic master bedroom with full bath (shower, jacuzzi tub, double sink, and walk in closet), and we have a first floor bath as well. Our main goal for THIS bathroom is wanting to update it and put in a stand up shower. The one thing that I definitely think could help us is changing the door swing to the bathroom! We could have it open out instead of in.

This is just my 2 cents, I'm certainly not a contractor. I would get rid of the shower and shift the vanity over to the right so it's in the middle of the wall. You should be able to do so without having to move the plumbing. I would also make it a good enough size so it can hold your linens as well. But not so huge that it looks ridiculous. I think building a closet in that corner won't look quite as clean. You can save that money and put it towards the vanity and working on the rest of the bathroom. I also think you can totally get rid of the bathtub and put a big shower there instead. Would be pretty great to have a spacious shower. You can do the combo tub/shower thing but it won't look as good obviously. Hard to make style suggestions without knowing what the rest of the house is like. For some reason though, I do picture darker wood flooring and white walls. Not so sure how wood flooring holds up in a bathroom though.

There’s no way to “chisel under the tiles,” or excavate in any way, that doesn’t involve dislodging all those little pieces of partial tiles, including the diamonds. It could even result in weakening the bonds of neighboring tiles, which might not show up immediately. And once the little pieces were dislodged you would to clean their backs or use new pieces. Frankly, at this stage you should look for installing a threshold that doesn’t involve a lot of re-work and/or possibly compromising the installed tile edge. That’s why I proposed a rabbeted threshold. It may not be perfect, but it will work, and it will avoid all the headache and expense involved in doing a retro install of metal edging that should have been put in before the last bit of tile was laid at that doorway. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I am in Los Angeles and finished a remodel in a high rise. My remodel included a the master bath - I replaced the tub shower combination with a tiled shower which followed the footprint of the original tub. As has been posted, a shower in a high rise ESPECIALLY requires permits and multiple inspections. The plans were submitted to the City and my HOA had to approve everything. It required my signing a construction agreement with a deposit against damage. As I recall I also needed access to my neighbor's unit below me because the drain for a shower/tub is different than a drain for a tub but I might be confusing this with access needed for my neighbor's apartment in the guest bathroom because of some issues with old pipes :-). The shower itself was inspected three times including a 24 hour flood test as well as inspection of the fixtures installed. At least in Los Angeles, there are additional construction requirements for building in a high rise. For example, none of the framing can be wood in a building over three stories. The framing in my bathroom (and in a few other places in my unit) was replaced and it was metal and had to be installed at very specific distances and with specific metal materials. The FRAMING had to be inspected as well. I am not familiar with NYC Code requirements but would imagine that NYC is at least as stringent as Los Angeles in terms of building codes - especially in multi family high rise units. In my personal experience, one of the best sources for a great contractor if one lives in a coop/condo is to ask your manager who people in the building use and/or ask neighbors who have recently renovated. Hiring someone who has done a few jobs in your building is helpful as they know how to work with management and they also have experienced some of the quirks of the building. Doing major remodeling work in a high rise condo/coop is like nothing else. Just getting materials in and demo debris out on elevators is something that needs to be factored. Most condos/coops also have strict rules about how construction is done. And as pointed out, the ramifications of shoddy workmanship are potentially catastrophic - a water line that bursts or leaks can costs millions of damage as the water cascades through every unit in the stack down to the lobby. My GC (and my designer) were both people who had worked on projects in my building before I hired them and there was actually a network of GC's who knew each other working. My GC would regularly visit with the GC down the hall who was working on another unit. ETA - And the cost of work in a metropolitan condo/coop for anything is higher than the same work would be in a single family home - even in the same area in terms of cost of living. Because of construction rules, hours are limited which increases cost; floors and surfaces have to be protected - this is expensive in terms of both materials and the labor required to put down and take up every day; bringing in materials takes time; parking can be limited. For this reason many great contractors don't want to work in a high rise and so the pool is somewhat limited - which can be a good thing since as I wrote, it is generally helpful to hire someone who has worked in a specific building before. What was the scope of OP's work for his previous work with his GC. In my experience there is a huge difference between doing relatively minor cosmetic remodeling versus the kind of critical expertise needed for bathrooms. My HOA required proof of GC’s license and insurance as well as Certificate of Insirance naming the building as an additional insured. They also required proof that the permit’s had been obtained.