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…)

120 Comments

If you have enough clearance to move the tub, I vote to move it. It’s the simplest solution to your problem.

Connie

I have to say I think moving the shower/bath inward and making it just a shower. You could even do a corner shower if space is a huge consideration but walk-in shower on the first level is a huge re-sell draw because it helps with older/ailing relatives and my mother just spent MONTHS house-hunting trying to find that exact setup and it’d be a fun DIY job too! (I just got done doing it and loved it, personally)

I agree with the peeps before me who say yank out the tub, move that annoying wall and replace it with a shower. You can get custom liner pans online, so really *any* size is possible – and using tile instead of that fiberglass unit is sooooo much classier 😉
Regarding the location of full/powder baths: We use our den (on the main floor) as a spare bedroom sometimes, and it is a pita for our guests with bad knees to have to walk upstairs to use the shower. My vote is any configuration that allows for a toilet + shower (or bathtub) on each floor that has a bedroom is ideal. I’m guessing that your house is fancy-pants enough so the plumbing isn’t all in one wall; having a shower on a different line is really nice for dealing with clogged lines/reno work.

Whether to have an office or two bedrooms: umm, I’m a little confused by your description of how many bedrooms are already in the house. But….. it is awfully nice to have extra closet space to organize [read: hide] stuff. Even if you just use it as an office for now.

Is this bathroom near the kitchen? It sounds to me like having it be a half bath would be fine, and that is one less bath/shower for you or a future owner to have to clean. 🙂 Are there any other full baths on the main level, with the bedroom(s)?