In the process of demoing our closet/bathroom/shower that's directly connected to our master bedroom. The initial thought process was to find a way to improve our closet, this quickly turned into a discussion of 'why don't we just move the wall and redo everything?'. This area has always been a black eye for our house since moving in. The whole area is small and layout changes are minimal. It'll basically be a gut of everything, build new wall, and rebuild out the space.


Current Floorplan (right) vs the new on the left. I'll be moving the wall (non load bearing) into the room approximately 14". It's 14" because that's all the room I have to work with given the entry of the room.




This view is from the hallway looking into the master bedroom entry. The door opening is now 48"" will be downsized to fit a standard 32" door.



The following pictures are what the spaces look like. These pictures are from our initial walk through when we bought the home. (previous owners were Ags, so if you're reading this, Hi!)









The things I'm looking forward to removing:

The 80's gold mirrored pocket doors

The black toilet AND sink

The cedar planking completely covering the closet walls

The ~10" of wasted spaced that's firred out behind the shower

The soffit above the vanity

The vanity with slate tiled top

As of now I plan to do everything DIY with the exception of tape/mud/texture and carpeting in the master bdrm.

Any possibility of widening the bedroom entryway door while you're at it to allow for a 36" door to be installed instead of a 32"?

Not sure how long you plan to live in the house, but we just totally rennovated ours and widened all doors to 36" or wider in the process to allow for wheel chair races when we get older...plan to stay living here til they carry me out in a pine box!

I could have the door be bigger, but it'd take away from how much I could move the wall. You can see in the one hallway picture that the left edge of the door is already against the hallway and there's not really an option to move the entry to any other place in the room.

I definitely don't picture us being in the house long term so wheel chair accessibility isn't a huge concern.

So in the middle of the night if you have to sit and do your business you are looking directly at your spouse in bed? weird.

If you don't want to close the door, yes. I would think this is the case in a lot of homes.

We didn't design the layout, we're just trying to do as much as we can with what we have.

I couldn't tell there was a door separating from the pictures, sorry. Missed that.

Ha, thought that was why you said you were removing the sink and toilet.

Here is what I would do.. just a few small changes from your design and you can make some big differences:
First, you move your toilet to a dedicated water closet, which allows you to extend sink counter top, possibly add another sink.
Second, you get a linen closet, or a shelving nook in the master closet.

You keep your shower wall, since it appears to line up pretty close with my toilet room wall. Now you are just adding a toilet closet in your room basically, and then demoing half your closet wall to extend it out, and making a new entry way into bathroom. You only lose about 1' from your bedroom, but it's a pretty good size still at almost 14'.

I'm not sure if you can fit a front wall/door for toilet, but at least it puts it in its own space, and not facing the bathroom door. Your current toilet, IMO, is a terrible design.

I didn't save my file so I can't edit.. but one change; the left linen closet wall, that should line up with the wall between closet/sink, then you could put your door into closet. This would put linen closet IN the closet, which probably isn't technically correct.. it would just be built-ins in the closet at that point... But great place for shelves nonetheless.

The alternate would be, don't have a 'west' linen closet wall.. instead, extend the 'southern' closet wall to the west, and your linen closet would be created. You'd access it from the 'west', not the 'north'.

So right when you walk in bathroom, the linen closet is to your right, either open shelves, or with a small folding door or otherwise.

dp

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So in the middle of the night if you have to sit and do your business you are looking directly at your spouse in bed? weird.

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Who doesn't?

I like it. I also like the the water closet idea as it will make a big difference in privacy and resale..It can be smaller that OP above has but I do believe there is minimal sizes per code..If you have crawl space even better as plumbing will be in the area..

Also agree w/ post above that giving this area its own door instead of being wide open to room is good plan..

Dont know where the bed is going but if you are putting up a new wall you can also run your tv wiring inside so you can hang a TV on the wall cleanly and either put the box somewhere in closet or attic..

That being said-- what is the plan if that soffit you want to tear out has the electrical in it heading to the shower light?

Same goes for the 10" space behind the shower .. that could be a plumbing wall as there is no other real reason not to have used that space in the first place.

Might need to pull a light out of the soffit and punch a hole in side of shower wall to see what is going on..

Throw some glass on the shower wall instead of curtain and you are in business.. I would keep the cedar in the closet but not a biggie there..

Great feedback and suggestions 62strat.

I had another plan drawn up that I didn't post and it's actually very similiar to your edit.


I do think it'd greatly improve the layout and flow of the space but I did have a few concerns in doing so.

• The biggest issue is that it would require moving the toilet drain (slab foundation).
• Moving the water closet further out would take more space of the actual room.
• The jig/jag wall when entering the room may be weird and create an odd corner nook entry
• The 'hallway' nature entry into the bathroom

Toilet move on slab = finding where existing pipes are and cutting concrete...

It might be reaching a bit but you could turn the toilet 90* facing closet and build water closet around it.. move sinks into closet along wall and rebuild a closet where the new toilet was originally going to be moved to.

That should leave you a 24" opening into the shower and close up that shower wall.

This design would have a lot of wasted space as the side of the closet opposite sinks would be useless unless you put cabinets there..

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Dont know where the bed is going but if you are putting up a new wall you can also run your tv wiring inside so you can hang a TV on the wall cleanly and either put the box somewhere in closet or attic.

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See below for layout w/bed & exterior window drawn in.

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That being said-- what is the plan if that soffit you want to tear out has the electrical in it heading to the shower light?

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No biggie if so. Can just run a new piece of 12' romex from switch to can.

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Same goes for the 10" space behind the shower .. that could be a plumbing wall as there is no other real reason not to have used that space in the first place.

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I'm definitely curious why there's that much space behind the shower. I actually measured it last night and it's a full 13". All of the piping/connections for a shower can be housed in a typical 3.5" wallgap.



This shows a better layout with the bed and exterior window in place

I guess I should have posted this earlier. But these are the ideas I was originally planning on.

Easy/cheaper option on the top/left of a full wall in shower with a walk-in opening.
Preferred/better option on the bottom/right with a half wall and glass atop.


Second option would have a similar layout as this picture



This is my plan for the closet. 2 walls will have double layered rods with corner shelving with additional sleving against the other non-entry wall.


Something similar to this picture



Since I'll be removing the hideous golden mirrored pocket doors my plan would be for double 'barn' doors for the extra wide entry into the bathroom. Something similar to the below picture, but it'd be double doors

Demo day

Closet


Slate tile floor


Shower (lots of wasted/open space above and behind shower)






They were nice enough to put in shut off valves


The mortar based pan has been slow/hard work

The rest of the mortar shower pan and vanity is out. Found some lovely wallpaper behind the vanity.





And I wonder if this is why the sink never drained all that well??....

Got everything torn out. Let's just say that the electrical work is/was pretty sketchy.

New framing to begin in a few days.

What are those old porcelain bare light bulb fixtures up there for? Something that was covered up before work started? I was going to guess the place was built in the late 1970s, but is that a cast iron drain?

Yes, there was a soffit above the vanity with a couple 4" cans (picture below). The porcelain fixtures actually had light bulbs in them that still worked when I screwed them into another lamp.

Home was built in '70 and yes that is a cast iron drain that converts to black ABS pipe about 5' off the slab.

Got the new entry into the bedroom framed and rocked in, just need to get the door put in place.

Got a lot of the new electrical in place and the closet all rocked in.

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Need to split power?

Just use a spare plug, wrap it with masking tape, throw it in the attic, and call it good.

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Yeah, it's amazing what you can find when you open walls, etc. I've seen some doozies in my time!

Saw on a DIY show the other day where they found that someone decided to add a ceiling fan in a living room area so they ran an extension cord from the garage through the attic ladder opening to provide power to the ceiling fan in the middle of the room!

Dafuq were they thinking with that plug?

Things are looking great, you'll probably pass us up before long!

It's really making me wonder what other types of electrical things I'd find if I traced the rest of the house. A part of me wants to find out, the other part wants to leave it alone. 130deg attic temps are telling me to leave it alone for the time being.

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It's really making me wonder what other types of electrical things I'd find if I traced the rest of the house. A part of me wants to find out, the other part wants to leave it alone. 140deg attic temps are telling me to leave it alone for the time being.

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Yeah, I helped my son & DIL on their home rennovation last year. When we opened the wall between the kitchen and living room, I found about 6 splices wire nutted within the wall so I knew it was not done by a licensed electrican.

The house already had a smoldering fire in the attic just prior to them purchasing the house that the home owners had repaired. It was a line to the A/C unit that's in the attic.

Well, the day the AT&T Unverse guy arrived to set them up, he needed an outlet in the attic near the attic latter to plug his box into so I told him I'd run a new line from the outlet near the A/C unit to the area he needed. In doing so I traced the existing line and when I pulled it up out of the insulation, it arced bigtime and tripped the breaker. After futher inspection, I discovered that there was a splice point made in blue plastic junction box that was not secured or covered with a face plate and the box was melted significantly due to a loose connection and would have eventually caught fire had I not discovered it.

Just hoping there's nothing else crazy like that within the house elsewhere that we haven't discovered yet, but it's possible considering what we've found already.

Went and picked up the vanity top today. Not huge (22x43"), but a big upgrade from prior.

Great choice on the materials, just remember to seal it before you use it. And if anyone uses hair dye keep it as far away from the countertop as possible unless they've learned that lesson already. AMHIK

make sure your wife puts her perfume up (or your cologne) . hair products that contain oils (most women use these in conjunction with a flat iron) will stain.

ours has a few spots that are pretty stained.

Had a visitor a few days ago. I walked into the drywalled closet and the piece of batt insulation on the ground was making a noise. I kicked the insulation and a rat scurried out. Being the man that I am, I ran out screaming and shut the temp door to the bedroom behind me. Immediately went to Ace hardware and bought a trap & glue pads. I left them in the bathroom for over a day and came up empty handed. I search and couldn't find a sign of Templeton in the bathroom.

Fast forward to last night. I was on the ground measuring for cabinets and found droppings by the closet flange. I then noticed that the rag that I had stuffed down the drain was chewed up and tattered.

One theory is that he came in through the drain and also exited through the drain. The other theory is that he came in through the small gap I have into the attic due to ripped out sheetrock and then exited through the drain. (I think this is less likely since rats probably don't enjoy hanging out in a hot attic)


Hopefully with that out of the way, I've now got most of the millwork drawings done to be sent to my dad's cabinet guy.

Finally home for a weekend and able to be productive. Got the rest of the shower & pony wall framed in, almost all of the electrical pulled, & shower valve installed.

My brother had this heavy duty steel pipe with a plate welded to the bottom that was just laying around. I ended up using it to beef up my pony wall. I used wedge anchors to secure the pole to the slab and then the outer 2x4s were bolted to it. It made the wall much more sturdy than if I had left it out.













The plan for this weekend:

• One final romex pull
• Sweat in copper to pex adapter (can see the existing hot/cold copper lines in one of the above pictures)
• Figure out how to move the diffuser from a wall mount to the ceiling (since I moved the wall).

Depending on what's going on in the space above that register it might not be that bad. Hopefully they insulated it... I don't see signs of any on what's exposed though.

Ferguson's plumbing/HVAC will have all the oddball pieces you might need to modify what you have, and there's a good chance they'll have it in stock.

The existing metal duct coming down is 3.25x8". You can kinda see the existing duct coming down off the main trunk in the below pic.

I'm thinking of cutting a 6" circle at the end of the metal duct in the attic (since its end of line) and using the 6" hole to seal off the existing 3x8" opening with a piece of galvanized & mastic. I'd then be able to attach the 6" take off and duct it over a few feet to my new ceiling register box.

3.25x8 = 26 sq in
6" circle = 28.2 sq in

http://www.homedepot.com/p/6-in-Air-Tite-Take-Off-ATTO6/100143514

http://www.lowes.com/pd/IMPERIAL-6-in-x-4-in-Galvanized-Steel-90-Degree-Register-Duct-Boot/3712870

The existing duct trunk ended up being made of duct board instead of insulated galvanized like I was thinking.

Demoed the old duct and patched the bottom.


Got everything pieced together and sealed with mastic. Still need to get some sleeve insulation



Now on to finish drywalling.