Little Brick Cottage: Bathroom Plan

 **Please Note** The little brick cottage renovation project took place and was originally posted here in 2012! It was my first project I posted on as well. Scroll to the bottom of this post to see posts on this entire project.

The actual square footage, of the bathroom is quite generous, but as you see below, just to get to the sink is nearly a hazard, not to mention there is no shower because the window is in the way.

The “door”, and I use that word lightly, it’s actually a louvered bi-fold that allows absolutely no privacy. Anyway, it’s at the top of the page just to your left of the toilet, and that door goes into the kitchen.

Then you can see the window over the tub, and the squiggly line to your right of the tub is a big old radiator.

The vanity area is very hard to get to because of the toilet, there’s actually about a foot wide walkway to the sink, and it’s surrounded with cabinetry below and above, including over the radiator.

Here are couple of photos of the bathroom:

Cute vintage tub, but inside enamel was bad!

Toilet was winterized because heat was off.

On a more positive note…Our plan is to remove everything, hoping to actually save the toilet, (yes, we will get a new lid, but a good cleaning will hopefully bring this toilet right up to speed) and we’d like to try to save the old sink basin, not the tile around it, just the sink.

But everything else including tub, floor, cabinets, wall covering and even ceiling will have to go.

One more thing I should mention, being as this house was built in the late 1800’s the basement is pretty rustic, and there’s sort of a laundry area down there, but it’s pretty nasty. So we really want to be able to get it on the main level. After giving much thought to every possibility we could come up with, we decided we could steal some space from the back bedroom closet, which is on the other side of the wall at the foot of the tub, and be able to squeeze a stackable washer/dryer into the new enlarged bathroom.

So then our new floor plan is this:

So now you can see the kitchen door is still at the top of the page, but now there is a real door installed, and having it open into the bathroom toilet will actually be a benefit, blocking the view to the toilet from the kitchen when the door is open but still allowing light from window to lighten the kitchen.

Changes we hope to make are:

• Move the radiator to under the window.
• Remove the left wall and bump about 20” into the back closet, (which is totally ok for the bedroom closet, as it’s now shaped like a weird ‘L’ and is wasted space in there)
• Then in that new found space, create a closet for the washer and dryer, as well as a new space for the vanity.
• Which puts the tub, (with a shower hopefully too) on the wall where the vanity was.

Sounds good huh?  Does to me, but let’s see what we find when we get everything out of there. There must be, by code, 15” from the center of the toilet sewer pipe to the edge of the tub. (According to the plumber who looked at it last night) and we don’t have it…yet. We can move the toilet toward the door 4” before we hit the floor joist, which leave us 1” shy of the 15” needed. So if we gain an inch from tearing out the old back wall covering and plaster, we’re golden…if not, well back to the drafting board.

Well we’re sort of ‘golden’, I haven’t even mentioned the budget-breaking plumbing costs that no one will ever see. But it all needs to be replaced. It’s a mess. The tub doesn’t hardly even drain, just totally a mess and it all needs to go to be replaced anyway. Not a fun expense, but a very necessary one. Hopefully the new plumbing will last another 100 years. Good thing is that it’s all totally accessible from the basement, it could be a real nightmare if not.

So, there you have it. I’ll keep you posted!

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Here are all the posts from 2012 showing the entire renovations projects on the little brick cottage: