BEFORE THE ARCHITECT – MODEL DRAWINGS
Bathroom Remodel
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Here we are with a basic remodeling opportunity — a moderately sized bathroom with insufficient closet space, particularly accessible for guests to access for personal, bathroom amenities, e.g., bath towels.
A dimensioned and annotated floor plan in a line drawing of interior space follows:
These are the constraints —
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At the northeast, the 19" wide cased opening with an 11" clearspan is not enough for almost any kind of towel storage and retrieval. |
 | At the northwest, an abutting closet may be invaded for space, but the owner would prefer otherwise if possible. |
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Moving the bathroom's perimeter walls is not possible. |
Any lavatory must have an undercabinet, no pedestals.
No wall-mounted cabinets.
This is the enabler —
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A single lavatory is acceptable, in lieu of the double lavatory existing. |
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Now we'll summarily work through several drawings of what might be.
It's the old boy's opinion that there's not much worth struggling to gain on the north and west walls; however, the east and south walls may bear a closer look.
We start off by chopping the lavatory countertop in half and slip in a closet. First on one side, and then the other, i.e., keep the left-hand lavatory where it is and insert a closet on the right side, then vice versa.
There are ways to measure the effect we've made — quantitative and qualitative.
From a numbers point of view, where the left-hand lavatory stays put that follows, we've added 500 square inches of surface area (2 shelves = 1000 square inches . . . plus 500 for the floor area, too, when it comes to storage). We benefited by the existing wall on the right side of our new closet, because we didn't have to take the time and money to build it, and an extra 5" or so of wall thickness (read: closet space lost to structure) is not ours about which to be concerned. And, we've not moved the remaining lavatory.
From a qualitative, practical point of view, it'd be easier to grab a towel on the way to the shower, passing the new closet. On the downside, someone standing at the left-hand lavatory might get a door in the butt unexpectedly.
This is the left-hand lavatory stays put plan view —
Let's move the pieces around the other way: keep the right-hand lavatory and set a closet in lieu of the left-hand lavatory. Quantitatively, we've done ourselves wrong. We've had to build walls on either side of the new closet, and we're down to 400 square inches of surface area, 20% less than before. Still, no lavatory has been moved, no plumber needed to do that job. Qualitatively, we've got the lavatory washer's butt out of the way, tucked in more privately away from the passage door. Note please that we've stuck to double doors to minimize intrusion into the interior space of the bathroom and obviated any door conflicts.
In either instance so far, these rearrangements may require reframing or bolstering of the structure below the new wall structures. This is not a new house, and it is not on a slab. A quick look underneath the bathroom by a capable carpenter is all that's needed to make a determination in this regard.
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Now we'll modify this plan a bit. Let's still be stingy on the plumbing, and leave one of the lavatories right where it is. But which one?
Moving the left-hand lavatory farther left is not an active option at this stage — remember, no plumber before his time. Not knowing where the two existing lavatories gain their pressured supplies nor where they drain, we could encounter quite a disruption if, say, the supply and drain services are centered on the right-hand lavatory while we're contemplating leaving only the left-hand one and, to make matters a little more difficult, we move that left-hand one even more to the left to be tight in the corner by the door. For our troubles, we'd get about 680 square inches of surface area within the closet. We won't likely be doing things this way, but it'd look like this in plan view if we did.
So let's move the other way. The right-hand lavatory stays put. We chop the countertop in half, and run a closet in lieu of the lavatory all the way to the corner by the door. We get about 540 square inches of surface area, use up all the dead space in the corner, and we don't move the plumbing. The underfloor structural issue is still in play.
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How about an angled lavatory?
Well, how about it? As you can see in the geezer's redraw (below) of the right-hand lavatory now angled at 45-degrees, you'd be able to wash one hand at a time. The lavatory we've been using is 1'-3" front to back, set off on the right. Average size. It wouldn't fit but just about halfway into the angled space, and not without hacking out the front of the countertop and letting it hang over the edge into the bathroom. Not a pretty site.
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Finally, we might be able to take an entirely different approach and work off the south wall. Gray beard won't draw it for now, just write about it. Imagine moving the toilet and wing wall almost 1' west, crowding in the toilet to a not entirely uncomfortable space of about 6" leeway on each side. Then build a closet along the east side of that wall. It's be about 3' wide and about 1 foot deep. You could add some to that closet by shifting the passageway door farther east a little bit, and still – maybe – keep both lavatories. There's not a lot of closest space gained, particularly in depth.
This is not an ideal solution; it's probably not as useful as others we've covered already. But it does have some attraction if the toilet-moving isn't a big deal, and sometimes it's not. All depends on where the drain line runs and how it's framed down below. Introducing a shift in the door is just a teaser for further thought. Again, such moves oftentimes are not big deals. Just a kernel of a design idea, but you never know. The worst that may come of it is to make one of the other solutions appear a lot more reasonable.
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That's it for the time-being. AG'll let the client mull this over.
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The budget stopped here.
This is enough to weigh all the options. There's nothing much to any of these ideas that a competent carpenter can't do or boss just based on what's drawn.
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