Design Dilemma: Bathroom layout

Hello sweet friends of the Jungalow. We are getting ready to embark on the next reno project at our Jungalow by the River. It’s both exciting and nerve racking, as these renovation projects tend to be. And we’ve been stuck at the design phase for several months. The layout of the house is so small and relatively odd, that almost daily I change my mind as to what the best layout idea is for this bathroom.  So,  after too many weeks of back and forth between Jason and I, we thought we’d open up the floor to see what you guys think! Ok so here’s the deal…

Current Layout

The above floorplan is the current layout of the front portion of our Jungalow. In the current layout, the front entrance to the home is into the living room, to the immediate left of the living room is the Blue Room (our extra bedroom that we currently use as a TV room/guest room). I’ve added some pics to the floorplan as references, ’cause this sh*& gets a bit complicated.

There are some good things about the current layout. For example, Jason keeps his clothes in the Blue Room and so it’s convenient to have a bathroom nearby. In the current layout the bathroom also is large enough for a bathtub. Yay.

Current Layout

But, there are also some not-so-great things about the layout that you can see in the floor plan without the reference images. See how those two doors knock into each other in the Blue Room? Yeah, it’s very annoying. Another consideration is the bathroom entry-point. If, one day, this blue room turns into a bedroom for Ida (like if we have another baby or if she outgrows her current room which is VERY tiny) the two bathrooms in the house would only be accessible through bedrooms. Is that weird??

 

This is the bathroom in question, and here’s what it looks like right now:

I know. I know. In the new layout I’ll be sure we have a place to but a garbage can, this drives me bananas.

So we’ve played around with a ton of different layout ideas, all of which have plusses and minuses — so check it out:

1.) The entryway is through the living room.

You go through a small corridor to get to the bathroom. Here are the pros and cons, as we see it, of this arrangement.

PROS
1.) Entrance is through a ‘public’ area of the house, (not off of a bedroom).
2.) Bathtub is under the window (which we would like).

CONS
1.) We loose the pantry in our dining room.
2.) We loose a key portion of a nice big wall in our living room where we were planning to add a shelving unit.
3.) We can’t add a pocket door to the closet (marked ‘storage’) in the Blue Room to fix the issue of those two doors bumping into each other.

 

2.) The entryway is through the dining room.

In this next layout option, the entrance is through the dining room, on the center of the lateral wall. We would put in a pocket door, and wallpaper the door that that it was almost invisible.

PROS
1.) Entrance is through a ‘public’ area of the house, (not off of a bedroom).
2.) Bathtub is under the window.
3.) Toilet gets its own little ‘area’ that could be potentially closed off from the bathing area. Fancy.
4.) This layout allows for a bigger bathroom with room for a larger vanity and more bathroom storage.

CONS
1.) We loose the pantry in our dining room.
2.) It’s kinda gross to have the bathroom off of the dining room.
3.) We can’t add a pocket door to the closet (marked ‘storage’) in the Blue Room to fix the issue of those two doors bumping into each other.

3.) The entryway stays in the Blue Room

In this next layout option, the entrance remains in the Blue Room.

PROS
1.) Bathtub is under the window.
2.) We keep the dining room storage
3.) We can add a pocket door to the closet (marked ‘storage’) in the Blue Room to fix the issue of those two doors bumping into each other.

CONS
1.) The only entrances to both bathrooms are through bedrooms
2.) The bathroom remains small

So there you have it! This is our design dilemma. What do you think? Which would you choose if you were redoing your home? Or which option would you want if you were going to buy this house? I’d love any insight that you have — or if you have any additional ideas that we haven’t thought of yet we’d love to hear them!!

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Top photo by Danae Horst for the Jungalow — it features the shower curtain that we designed for Schoolhouse Electric–not my bathroom though! ;) We created the floor plans with Floorplanner.com.

from The Jungalow http://ift.tt/2gw39Fp