Sunday, February 1, 2009

Calling all designers or people with opinions

Bathroom Remodel.
I didn't think that is what we were getting ourselves into, but it seems when you ask a plumber to come over and estimate moving your bath tub and sink, that is what it is called.
Oh. Ok.

Our house is 1 and 1/2 stories high so the second floor has slanted ceilings. Our upstairs bathroom, previously a bed room up until 1970's or so, is spacious for a bathroom, tiny for a bed room. As you can see from the pictures below, this bathroom leaves a lot to be desired in terms of style. Prior to our ownership, the house was a rental for 15 years, clearly the only design factor considered here was cost of materials.

In order to do the addition in stages, we have to "remodel" the bathroom. Access to the eventual addition will be through a hall going through the window above. To begin, we turn the bath tub 90 degrees and move the sink to the newly created wall. This serves two purposes, it creates a hall and enables us to utilize the bathroom space more appropriately. The closet (see flowered wall paper above) behind the tub will be opened up and the tub will end at the knee wall. Yes, the ceiling will slant over the tub. The original floor is exposed in the closet, the green wide planks above, the remaining has a plywood sub floor with an adhesive linoleum tile, which as luck would have it, is already coming up.

Since our house is old and still retains a significant amount of the original charm, we are committed to maintaining historical accuracy, within reason. For example, I do not plan on scouring salvage yards for sink fixtures, a reproduction is fine. But upon thinking about the flooring in our bathroom and a conversation with our plumber regarding the slant and pitch of the floor, I have decided to paint the floor with marine grade paint. The level of effort to prepare the floor for tiling, would be counter productive. I just hope the floor is in good shape.

I would like to use white subway tiles for the tub surround and the ceiling (can you tile a ceiling?). I found some at Home Depot, but on the shelf, they looked cheap. Traditional bead board for the walls. We will purchase a new right hand bath tub (who knew?!) and a sink, the toilet can be reused. A skylight will enable us to have natural light as we will loose the window.

That is about as far as I have gotten in my thought process.

Thoughts? Opinions? Advice?

4 comments:

Texasholly said...

did blogger just remove my very long answer?>???>? OMG.

Happy Valley Mom said...

Sounds like a good plan.

Keep us posted on the progress

Debie Napoleon said...

I like your ideas and would suggest that you find a tile store instead of HD or Lowes to purchase the tile. The quality wll be better and you will have many more choices.

I would be concerned that the floor will be cold by only being painted. You'll need to consider that - indoor/outdoor area rug perhaps?

Anonymous said...

Julie and Frank have the same sort of bathroom as you ( slanted ceiling) and they just added a small skylight ... it made the bathroom much brighter and even appearing larger