Disaster Bathroom…Help Needed!
OK, so it’s not that bad. It’s “Blah”. I could easily make it “Look” awesome enough. The problem is that the tub placement is upsetting my living room plan and I JUST CAN’T GET PASSED IT!
That tub…right…there!
It just needs to be 8″ closer to the toilet! There’s room. I realize that would just make this already small bathroom even smaller but what is that weird extra space on the right of the toilet doing for anyone? Really? (It does make a nice place for the new “Flip Top” trash can that Brody can’t get into! (But I’d just put a trash can under the sink if I need to.)
So I’m considering moving the tub over or getting rid of it altogether and just having this be a pretty powder room. The bedroom that this bath “services” will never, not once, be used for Showering as long as we live here.
My question is:
What would you want if you were to walk into my house, if it were on the market?
Would you want two small bedrooms, each with their own bathroom?
Or, would you be OK with an office and one small bedroom with it’s own bath and then another bedroom with a bathroom upstairs (in addition to the master “wing” with bedroom, closet and bathroom AND the guest bedroom and bathroom downstairs)? So, it would still be 4 and 1/2 bathrooms in the house. (I’d just make the half bath upstairs a full bath and the full bath HERE a powder room.)
So, that’s three questions. Help me decide because I’m at an impasse here. I HATE this bathroom and would love to get rid of the tub altogether but I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot when it comes time to sell.
What would you do with this baby?
EDIT: I had to scratch this floorplan out for all those asking for clarification. Sorry it’s so hard to read…I was in a hurry!
Nothing is to scale but you can see where everything is on the main floor. The basement has a GIANT Guest bedroom and bathroom so our guests would NEVER use this TINY spare bedroom. There is a 1600 sq/ft open room upstairs that currently has a half bath. I want to make that a full bath with walk in shower and put in bunk beds so that upstairs would technically be a “bedroom”.
The only way I can see anyone actually wanting to use both of these small rooms as bedrooms is if they had two small children and then they wouldn’t really care if they had to use the en suite bathroom in the one bedroom. Right? Anyone with teenage kids would probably have the teens upstairs in the “Groovy Teen Hangout” room (that isn’t groovy yet but all in due time…)
Jumping in with my thoughts:
You might want to run this by a local realtor who “specializes” in your area of town. It’s good to know what the buyers are looking for, and seeing in your ‘hood.
Have you thought of making it a wheel chair- accessible shower area? install a wider door, remove the tub insert, and you’ll gain a few inches on the walls. Move that ill-placed wall to its rightful spot. Tile the walls, and make a shower without a “curb.” I’ve seen it in a guest room a friend put in her home (on the main floor) and it is lovely. Even if you never have a wheel chair-bound guest, you may have family members who have knee, ankle, or foot issues… (my hubs had major knee surgery at 50).
Having lived in a very large house as a kid, and having a summer home as well, my vote is this: go powder room! You can make it a much nicer powder room than it would otherwise be, a powder room has a different feel to it for guests…. nicer and more “just for them”. I don’t think that other 2 bedroom with one having it’s own bath is a big deal. Easy enough to work around, and turning the one into an office is a great solution. Every house needs an office!
You know you want to get rid of that tub. Just do it.
Of course, I may be biased…I was just telling my husband that I wanted to do pretty much the exact same thing in our main floor bathroom …but I wouldn’t be adding another shower upstairs.
I know you are getting loads of comments, but, I thought I would chime in too. If you move the tub over, how does that affect the accessibility of comfortably reaching the tub filler? Also, if you want to replace the tub with a shower, it’s nice to have 36″ depth of finished shower space for a comfortable shower. How much is left when you move the wall closer to the toliet? If you don’t have space for a comfortable shower then I say close up one of the openings, lose the tub and convert it to a powder room for guests who are visiting for dinner etc.
Alternatively, can you close up a doorway and rejig the configuration of the fixtures and gain some space with a better layout?
Dump the bathtub! If you’re adding a full bath upstairs by most of the bedrooms, just pull out the tub and make an AWESOME looking powder room. I bet just making it beautiful would more than cover anything you might “lose” by taking the tub out.