Beginning the Bathroom Remodel

A few posts back, I told the story of how buying a new couch led to painting 4 rooms, buying 3 new tv's (still to come), moving a bunch of furniture, building a couple of desks, and remodeling the upstairs bathroom. This is the story of the starting point of this bathroom.

I never really liked this bathroom. The upstairs bedroom was supposed to be a master suite addon (I think?) and it wasn't ever built properly. The original problem is that the roof was built too low. It's a very narrow staircase getting upstairs, the ceilings are very low (only 7'3") and the room is just small for a master suite. I'm not convinced that our bedroom furniture would actually fit through the doorway, much less all get into the room and leave room to walk. The BR closet is only 5' tall because the roof slopes down. The HVAC is totally messed up, it's cold in the winter and really hot all summer long, so we had to put a window unit in there. But it is a bedroom with a bathroom attached, so lets call that the master?

You get into the bathroom through a 24" wide door. The tile floor is popping up because the subfloor is plywood, not concrete backer board. There's a pedestal sink in there, because it's wedged into a strange cutout where the wall juts out for some reason. The wall is not wide enough at any one point to put a cabinet. There is a small closet with a few shelves, that is the only storage. We hung a curtain over the opening for that, no doors or anything. On the other wall, there is a toilet, slightly cramped space, and a standup shower that leaks into the laundry room downstairs, so we haven't used it in a few years. The leak is between  the back surround and the base, not a problem with the base itself. So we're eventually going to replace the shower surround too, but for now I'll just caulk it.

I got a bit excited about the demo, but still got some decent before pictures

Busted tile, pedestal sink, tiny closet that used to have a face frame

The pedestal sink is tucked into this angle in the wall

There was a face frame on this closet, and a lower shelf

The wainscoating had baseboard and chair rail and was all around the bathroom.

So you can already see a bunch of design problems in this bathroom. The ceiling is only at full height for about 18" before the roof joists force a slanted ceiling. Closing off that closet makes it look small. There is no storage. In general, it's pretty ugly, but the wainscoating does give a little bit of flair.

My design goals were to add as much space and as much storage as possible. Making the wall with the sink flush was a high priority. Kelley had the idea that there may be some more found space if we could make the closet bigger, and take some floor space back from the attic that would be ideal.

That's when we found this

I took a hammer to the wall. Found space!

tiny closet floor

Large wall to hide a toilet

Reclaim!

I put a hammer into that wall next to the toilet and found clear attic space. So it looks like we can widen the closet and make it open, we ended up adding a 3'x 2' space to our heated square footage. I decided to rip off that drywall where the sink was, it exposed a vent/drain pipe. So furr those studs out to make the wall flush and make it a shiplap accent wall. That will add some lines pointed to the length of the wall (8') to make the room feel bigger. Knock out as much of that wall next to the toilet as I can and create an open closet. Replace the tile floor with something that looks long to again create that illusion of length/space. Add storage.

This is going to be a fun project with a bunch of interesting parts!