The New Bathroom

Well folks, it's the moment Peggy's been waiting for. It's time for the next (and last) major renovation to our house! We've already done all of the bedrooms (although Peggy's going to make me REDO the office soon), the living room, much of the outside of the house, and of course the kitchen. After this, we plan on doing some minor things to the basement, but nothing too much. It's time to remodel the bathroom!

Thanks to my friend Matt, I've gotten a lot better at using microsoft paint (we use it to make drawings for questions on our tests). So, I used it to come up with some schematics. Of course, it's not to scale, but close enough. This is what we currently have:
I'm very excited this morning because I think I finally have the plan for what we're going to do. If you've even been in our bathroom, you know the problem. You open the door and BAMMM, there's the sink. The door is just in the wrong place. So, the obvious solution is to move the door down to the left. Well, the problem is that the flue pipe for the furnace runs just to the left of the door. So, we originally thought we couldn't do this option.

Our plan as of last night was this: take out the closet (yeah, how much would that suck!), move the sink and toilet to the left of the room, and move the door to the right (where the current sink is). Now, there's many problems with this. First, we lose a bathroom closet (and we don't have a hall closet!). Second, the sink would have to be about 10 inches less wide than it is now....meaning it would have to basically be just the sink bowl and not much counter space....obviously less than ideal if you don't have a closet. Third, there would be a lot of plumbing work. The biggest benefit of this plan is that we wouldn't have to cut out the sink like it is now. The door would open fully and you could easily enter and exit.

Here's option #1. As you can see, no closet, and the sink gets appreciably smaller:
That had been our plan for the last several months. But, this morning, I returned to my original idea for the bathroom, and I think it's the way to go. So, here's the new plan: Move both the bathroom and our bedroom doors to the left (away from the kitchen) about a foot. This will put the bathroom door directly into the furnace flue and bathroom closet. So, we'll move the flue and closet back a foot (into our bedroom). That will open up the space sooooo much more.

Pro's and con's: The benefits (in addition to the benefits from the previous plan) are that we still get to have a closet (huuuuge benefit!), we get a full normal sized bathroom sink (another huge benefit), we can make the closet wider if we want to, we can keep the laundry chute right where it is (with the old plan, we were considering moving it to the hallway, which wouldn't be nearly as convenient since we only use it for cloth diapers), and I don't have to move a ton of plumbing. The cons are that we will lose a tiny bit of the bedroom (about 3 square feet), it will be a lot of work to move the flue, frame in two new doors instead of one, and frame in the new closet in the bedroom space.

Overall, I really think the second option is the way to go. The biggest thing is getting to keep the closet and having a normal sized sink. Once it's all done, option one leaves us something to be desired. Even though it's going to be more work, when it's all over, option number two gives us exactly what we're looking for, with no trade-offs.

Schematic of Option #2:
On a side note, apparently Peggy thought I said at some point that this project would be done in a weekend.....HA! Maybe I said it would be demolished in a weekend, but it certainly won't be done in a weekend. My goal is a month, but I realize that that's not going to happen (shhhhhhh, don't tell Peggy!). My actual goal is closer to two months, although I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't done until the end of the school year. There is a big incentive to finish, because we're planning on refinancing once the project is all done. I'd prefer to do this sooner rather than later.

The biggest problem is school. Between working more than full time, grading, and taking two masters courses, I just don't plan on having a lot of time to work. Add in to that the fact that I won't be able to do a whole lot when Abby's sleeping, and I just won't have a lot of time to work on it.

I'm hoping that through at least part of the renovation, the bathroom will be usable. While I'm moving doors, framing the closet and moving the flue, we should be able to use the bathroom (although it might be without a door!). Then I plan on replacing the tub and tile. So, I don't think we'll be without a tub for too long. Finally, I'll replace the sink and toilet. I think if I do it in smaller chunks like this, we'll be able to use some things throughout the project. But, since I've never done a bathroom before, we'll see how it all works out! It would probably be easiest to just take out the tub, sink, and toilet all at the same time and gut the entire thing. Then do the floor, tiling, new wallboard, etc. That's probably a month or so away, so we'll see what happens.

And finally some pictures to remind you of the terrible bathroom we now use. Syanara old friend! Notice the width between the open door and sink, about two feet, yikes! Our new plan should increase this to about three feet.

Abby saying goodbye to the toilet. On a side note, I have no idea where she found that cap! She finds EVERYTHING lately, from things like this to the tiniest piece of lint or hair.