Planning the Next Project: Bedroom, Bathroom and More!

Backing up a little bit from the last post to the beginning of the year, planning for the bathroom started as soon as the giant kitchen + everything else project finished. Talking about ideas began even earlier when work started winding down. These are the things that happen when the topic of kids begins to come up, as if the horrible layout (and everything else!) of the existing bathroom wasn't already motivation enough to get the next big thing moving.

Here's the house as it was modeled on November 15h, 2014. Most of the work will be in the top-right corner of the house, with a little more to close off the hall that was made to access the master bedroom when the addition was built in 2002. It's no longer needed since I just opened it up to the family room.

The overhead view shows things a little better. In real life the shower was more of an L shape and bigger but this worked well enough. Windows in the master and half bath are not shown. The closet is really small and a strange shape with next to no storage, and the toilet is just out there in the open. Already mentioned the hall that was used to enter the master bedroom, the plan was to turn that area into something that's actually useful.

 

This is what the idea was as of January 15. Get rid of the hall to the bedroom and put the floorplan back to about what it was when the house was built. Split the long closet that was made back when I moved in by walling off the DLP TV hole from the addition the previous owners made. Half of it is accessible from the family room, the other half with double doors from the bedroom. The hamper concept was inspired by the house in San Antonio that I was *really* missing at this point. The master closet and water closet were both just kind of made from leftover space. The half bath moves to where the dartboard area was, and the plan was to add a window. I didn't like having it open directly to the family room, but it's either this or have an actual closet

I posted the layout the gardenweb (now houzz as of August) forums for advice, and all kinds of suggestions came in. Everything from moving the closet over where the tub and shower were, which I wasn't a huge fan of because the bathroom would lose its big window and all of the plumbing would have to be completely redone. To pretty much what they look like below, which is their final layout. Also a huge quality of life improvement, the washer and dryer can come in from where they were way over in the garage.

Fun fact about the whole washer/dryer in the garage thing, a squirrel can get stuck inside a washing machine when the door is left open. Also, a pair of welding gloves does a great job of protecting your hands while retrieving a squirrel from inside of a washing machine and setting it free outside!

So I finally had a plan to set out and build, minus the window in the half bath because that was going to be a lot more trouble than it was worth. Thanks to houzz we also had a pretty good idea about materials and the overall look everything should have although final material choices weren't made yet. All that was left was to take a little break to recover from the previous adventure, do the 'before' pictures and get going!