Back Bathroom Floor Plan Revisions

I'm back with more back bathroom floor plan fun. And I hope this time not to stress you out :) When I posted about the floor plan on Tuesday Chris realized there were a couple of things we had to change and then my step dad wrote an email to me with a fantabulous idea for our shower. So yesterday, we made a couple revisions.

The first up was actually making sure that the sink and toilet fit the space and gave us enough room to sit on the pot. Some of you expressed your desire to have the toilet rotated around (believe me, I did too). But because of existing plumbing and framing work done that was just not in the cards for us. I know, poopy, but hey, I just had to move on. So we drove down to HD and bought the toilet we wanted (an American Standard Champion 4 Max found here on Amazon, but it's way cheaper at HD) and then put it "in place" in the bathroom with the sink

Obviously the sink will be mounted a bit more professionally when the bathroom is done, but we just wanted to get a general idea. We actually had to cut out some of the framing in the wall to get it in (the doorway into the room from the bedroom is taped off with plastic to keep the bedroom from getting crazy dusty) but that's okay because we had to cut it away anyway to accommodate our cubbies anyway.

Chris and I both had a few pretend bathroom experiences. We walked around it, sat down, got up, moved around, etc. to make sure that there really was enough room and that things weren't too tight (if they were we'd get a round front instead of the elongated one to save a few inches). But there actually was plenty of room and it didn't feel cramped one bit. Right Chris?

Hehe :)

Once the toilet situation was figured out it was time to move on to the shower

My step dad wrote me an email and pointed out that, DUH! the shower didn't have to be a rectangle. I could make it any shape I wanted. Brilliant! Here is CBH's shower (it has glass now, but this was towards the end of their renovating process and their glass hadn't been installed yet)

Not the best pic I have (bad lighting) but notice the shape? It's a rectangle that cuts across diagonally in the corner. Now, for his shower they did this because they didn't want the corner so far into the room and cramp things, and if we replicated the same shape in our shower we'd be able to bump out both the width and length by a couple of inches (gaining usable space) and then cutting across diagonally at the corner to make way for the door and not have the corner of the shower so far into the room taking up floor space. Hooray!

With this new plan we were able to adjust the width of the shower and make it wider by 5 inches. In such a small space 5 inches makes a big difference

Once that was figured out we started trying to lay out where we wanted the diagonal cut across for the door. We measured the opening in our main bathroom's shower at 25 1/2 inches. We bumped this one up to 26" (I know, huge difference, right?) and brought out the speed square to make sure we got a nice 45 degree angle

And once we had that angle figured out with a width of 26" for the door, the length of the shower was determined to be 49", 8" longer than the previous dimension, but it doesn't cramp the space at all

Here's what it looked like before

Much roomier. Chris and I both "stepped in" and it can comfortably fit two people.

We're unsure if we'll build one, two or no cripple walls on the other two shower walls (probably about 30" tall). If it really saves on glass we'll do it, but both of us would prefer the entire surround to be glass for a more seamless look. I'll get the glass company in here in a week or two to make us a rough estimate to see what plan we should go with. Hopefully it won't be too much to make it all glass vs. cripple wall and glass because I think all glass will look positively divine.

We also had to adjust the niche plan, but that's minor. Chris pointed out to me that the idea for my one niche 20" wide wouldn't work because that's a load bearing wall and to make one wide niche we'd have to put in a header, etc. (duh), so instead we'll just built 2 smaller niches right next to each other in each stud bay. Easy revision.

The last revision to the plan were our cubbies

Because the shower was now wider we had to adjust the placement of the cubbies. We lost 8 inches so I was a little nervous that the cubbies would have to be shrunk down a lot, but instead of making them 10" from the finished wall on the right and the edge of the shower glass on the left, I just made them 4" away

It'll make it feel a little tighter, but storage in here is a must so I'm okay with it.

Now with those revisions made we can actually start moving forward! Which we did last night. After the shower size was figured out, we placed the plumbing and Chris started soldering

Ahhhh, the smell of progress :)

Back Bathroom Mood Board

I'm not going to lie, this post has been a draft since FEBRUARY OF LAST YEAR. Yes, February of 2011. That's how long it's been since the back bathroom has been gutted and we started purchasing many of the materials. So embarrassing I know. But because we're finally starting to actually work on the back bathroom (hooray!) I think it's time to fill you in on all the fixtures that have already been decided on. 18 months ago. And have been pilled in our laundry room. For 18 months.

Here she blows (you can click on it to make it bigger)

Let's break it down.

1. Paint colors. I still can't quite decide on the color (but that'll come later when more of the room is complete). I'm thinking about a grayish green but am on the fence about dark or light. I'm not afraid of dark colors anymore, but the bathroom is really pretty small, so I'm afraid that it might look really closed in. There will be A LOT of white tile though, so there really won't be that much paint on the walls...as you can tell I really have no idea.What I do like (from bottom to top) are these Benjamin Moore colors: Sabre Gray, Cos Cob Stonewall and Ashwood Moss.

2. Shower faucet: Kohler Kelston (no tub filler because we'll just have a stand-up shower in here). The finish will be oil rubbed bronze (that's all the finishes in our house as wrought iron was very common in these homes originally so we try to keep the same color idea). I really like the angles of it.

3. Sink faucet: Jado Hatteras (oil rubbed bronze, though it's no longer available in that finish). Normally we wouldn't splurge on a faucet this expensive, but it was gifted to us by American Standard because of all of the problems we had with our sink in our main bathroom. We love the vintage feel and both of us like sink faucets that have water come out of the faucet from higher up. It makes hand and face washing a whole lot easier.

4. Recessed medicine cabinet, sorta like this one. We'll see what HD has in stock when we go get one, but we definitely want a recessed cabinet. This room has very little storage to work with, so a medicine cabinet is a must. And I've always liked the idea of it being recessed.

5. Sink: Porcher Sapho wall mount. We totally splurged on this sink in our main bathroom (it was about $500, I know, I said we splurged). But I LOVE it. And again, we were very lucky that American Standard gifted us the same sink when we had all of our problems with the main bathroom sink (delayed for many months, just a pedestal shipped the first time - ours is wall mounted so a pedestal was unnecessary, sink broken the second shipping, and when it finally arrived the towel bar didn't fit properly). After our problems Style Kitchen and Bath (the showroom where we got it) was super awesome and helped us get in contact with American Standard (they own Porcher and Jado) and the head designer of American Standard contacted us (!!! I know, crazy !!!) and worked with us and was really just so nice and wonderful and very apologetic of the headache. They were so great and nice and went above and beyond. I love American Standard now because they really actually seem to care if their customers are happy and that means a lot to me. Plus, I LOVE this sink.

6. Some sort of glass shelf. This is a recent idea (maybe a week ago), so we haven't settled on which one we'll get. The one on the mood board is a little expensive and I can't stomach paying that much for just a shelf, so we'll see what we settle on. The shelf is a must though because, again, we've got to stick in as much storage as possible.

7. ALL the tile. From left to right: Biltmore Niles mosaic, Ming Green small subway tile and White Beveled Edge Gloss subway tile. Biltmore will be the bathroom floor. I used to want a tile detail in the shower on the wall and that was what was going to be the Ming Green, but now I don't really like that idea, so we'll use this for the shower floor and in the back of niche in the shower for our shampoo, etc. instead. The white beveled subway tile (which I LOVE) will be the wall tile that will go up to 5 ft. all around the room and to the ceiling in the shower area. We tiled FOR MANY HOURS when we tiled the main bathroom and that one just has tile 36" around the room (and to the ceiling in the shower) so we're clearly masochists because tiling, and grouting, this room will take a long time. But it will look soooooo pretty.

8. Toilet. Chris knows exactly what toilet we're getting, but I can never remember. We LOVE our American Standard Cadet toilet in the main bathroom, so we'll be getting another Cadet, but it will need more flushing power than the one in the main bathroom because this one is far in the back corner of the house so it's gotta really get our crap to the sewer good :)

Alright, so that's the plan! What do you think?

Back Bathroom Floor Plan

Normally I'm really excited to do floor plans. But something about Chris asking me to make sure I figured out the exact floor plan of the bathroom while he was down in LA for Thanksgiving weekend felt very daunting. We were kind of stuck here

In order to keep moving forward I needed to really pin down the layout. We had an idea of the layout we wanted, but I really needed to lock down all the measurements (how big is the shower, where exactly on the wall where the sink go, what's the measurement of our cubbies, etc.) Once that step is complete we can start wiring (and figuring out the exact placement) for outlets, finish the rest of the framing, rough in some of the plumbing and start putting up the rest of the wonderboard. 

In some ways having the freedom to move things around exactly where I wanted them made things a bit more difficult. Pretty much the only thing that was exactly fixed was the toilet. The sink and shower were fixed on which walls they would go on, but where exactly they'd be placed was up to us.

Armed with the measurements of the toilet and sink I started taping things off. Hello future toilet

The sink will go to the left of the toilet in the above pic. The sink is pretty wide (26'") and both Chris and I didn't want it attached dead in the corner sharing two edges (the back and left) with walls. We wanted it spaced out from the left wall just a little bit. The only kicker was that we need enough clearance in front of the toilet so that we can sit on the pot and not knock into the sink, and things were a bit tight (I used that piece of wonderboard as a place holder for where I figured our feet would go out to while sitting on the toilet)

I wanted the sink to be 6" away from the left wall, but that just wasn't going to fit with the toilet so I made it 4" away. With just the 4" bump out there was 17 1/2" between the sink and the toilet. We have 15" between the toilet and tub in the main bathroom and it's a little tight, but it works, so I figured this would be okay

It would have been great if we could have rotated the toilet 90 degrees counter clockwise because there was plenty of room in the other direction...

...but because of framing issues, that just wasn't going to happen. It would have been awesome, but hey, that's what's renovating is about - working with what you've got. 

Once the sink and toilet placement was set, I moved on to figuring out the dimensions of the shower. We'll be doing a mud job so we can make the shower any dimension that we want. Originally I wanted it to be 40" wide, but that made it come very close to the corner of the sink and there wasn't very good clearance to get through to the toilet

Because things were a little tight, I decided to make it only 36" wide (and 40" long) and it gave everything a little bit more breathing room

This shower will have a glass enclosure. I figure with a 36" wide shower we'll have a 6" fixed pane of glass so the shower door will be 30" wide (like a standard interior door). If the door swung out into the room it would come really close to the entrance of the room

So we'll have the door swing into the wall so that it doesn't cramp the room so much. 

I really wanted a bench in the shower so I googled around to figure out what the hell its dimensions should be (the internet says anywhere from 16-20" tall and 12-18" deep) and taped it off (I made it 20" tall and only 12" deep)

But when I "sat" on the imaginary seat, it made the shower feel pretty small

No dice. So then I opted for a corner shower bench (18" from each corner side). Originally Chris and wanted the bench to be tiled, but because the shower area isn't very large I was afraid that having a tiled bench might cramp things even more and make it look really full. Then all of a sudden it dawned on me and I realized that there are wood benches in showers all the time so we could make this corner bench out of wood, hooray! The wood would tie in the darker shades of the oil-rubbed bronze fixtures and break up all of the white in the shower. Teak is a safe wood for shower areas, so now I just have to convince Chris... (I believe his exact response was, "That will be a lot of work, we'll talk about it.")

Next on the list was figuring out the exact placement of our cubbies

The cubbies are a marvelous idea that one of us thought of (I can't remember who because it was so damn long ago by this time). This wall is already framed, but it's not load bearing so we'll alter the framing a bit to accommodate the cubbies we'll build into this wall for storage.

I wanted the cubbies centered on the 40" of space between the wall and the end of the shower

They will be roughly 10" from the wall, 10" from the end of the shower and 20" wide.

Then came the task of figuring out how high to make it off the ground, how tall to make it and what size to make all the shelves. For a place holder for the tape I drilled up two pieces of scrap wood for where the top and bottom of the cubbies would be

I was just winging it and the top didn't quite make it to 6' like I'd intended, but whatever

I thought I'd spend more time figuring out all the cubbie details, but it actually came pretty organically. 6' seemed like a good height, 2' from the floor seemed like a distance from the ground and then with a 4' tall opening it made sense for all the shelves to be 12" tall

I'm not sure what material the shelves will be, but I'm leaning towards making them teak as well to tie them into the shower bench. 

There's even enough room in the corner between the cubbies and the light switch to put up a hook for a towel

The last task on the list? Figuring out the niche in the shower for our shampoo, shaving cream, etc. Originally I thought having 2 on each corner wall would be cool, but measuring that all out so it didn't get in the way of the shower faucet control and the plumbing behind the wall would be a little annoying. So I just opted for one on the non-plumbing wall, measured out how much space our shower crap takes up in the other bathroom and figured out 20" wide and 12" high was a good space. Plus, it matches the same size as each of our cubbie shelves and I thought that was pretty cool

Once I got everything all figured out I wrote down necessary measurements on the tape so I could remember the exact dimensions I had set everything to. The tape is pretty accurate, but I wasn't as anal retentive as I usually am so they were an inch off here or there in some cases, so writing the exact measurements was important

And that my friends, is how I spent almost 2 1/2 hours of my Saturday afternoon. But at least now we can really get moving on the back bathroom!

Art Room/Office & Animal Room in Order, Kinda

Ever since I painted my art room and now art room/office I've been procrastinating about getting it in order. The task seemed a little arduous seeing as the contents of the room were all over the house, but this past weekend I made some serious headway. And while it's not totally finished, it's about 87% there.

Now that it's not just my art room I had to figure out a floor plan that allowed for my desk, sewing table and work table. And all are fairly big. And one whole wall is taken up by my big, much loved shelving unit. And another wall is not super usable because it can get in the way of getting into the animal room (it's a straight shot from the doorway into the room to the doorway into the animal room). It took me a while of rotating things around before I settled on a layout I liked

I liked the above layout the best and left it like that for a couple days, but the view from my desk was right into our neighbor's yard

Our neighbor's have a very pretty backyard, but I felt a little like a creeper staring at their house and into the yard. A little too voyeuristic. So again, a shift

I still haven't moved in my work table (we're building new legs for it). It'll go to the left of my sewing table in the above pic. And the view now from my desk makes me feel much less like a creeper

That wall is boring now, but I plan on covering it with paintings, photos, artwork, etc., so it'll be pretty to look at in the future.

Once the layout was set I slowly started putting things back in place. And I do mean slowly. It's taken me nearly 2 weeks

And now?

Chris and I still need to trim the top of it and then I'll line up all my artist's books on top. But the shelving unit fits all of my work and art supplies (after a bit of a purge), so that is a very good thing.

My desk area still looks the same (though with the addition of my lunch on my desk...)

I'll move the printer in here as well (it currently resides in Chris' office, but I use it a lot more for work), and I need to make curtains. In the morning I can barely see my monitor because the sun is so bright through the window on the left and then in the afternoon it gets quite warm from the sun coming in through the window on the right. I bought fabric and it has arrived, but it's very light so I also purchased black out fabric (that I'll use for Cashew's room too) and that has yet to arrive. Here's the fabric I went with

(image from and purchased here)

And the wall across from my desk? It now looks like this

It still looks pretty bare. Clearly my bobbleheads need art friends on the wall. But I just haven't gotten there yet. I'm thinking it'll look pretty awesome though :) I've got my stack of stuff to go on the wall waiting, I've just been too lazy to put it all up yet.

And because this room is finally getting in order, the animal room is almost cleared out and ready to start filling it with Cashew's stuff (of which we have bought none of yet)

I'm still not sure of the layout, but we'll get it figured out once we start getting the crib, dresser and all that other fun stuff.

And since we're on the subject of the Cashew, here's a belly pic of me from Thanksgiving

My cousin is also pregnant, so it was our first pregnancy pic together. She's due a little over a month after me (baby #3 for her and her husband) so it's pretty cool that we can share our little preggo bellies together. Though, I must confess, my belly is very full from a scrumptious Thanksgiving feast I'd eaten about an hour before this pic was taken, so I was about 1/2 baby belly and 1/2 food belly but I felt comfortable blaming it all on the Cashew.

And how is Cashew treating me? Well, the gas has mostly subsided (thank god) and I've started eating a lot of small meals a day instead of the standard 3. I've found that eating a small amount about every 2-3 hours makes me feel a lot better. And I'm lucky that mostly working from home since the baseball season is over allows me to eat well and eat frequently without too much trouble. I've started to get some nasty headaches, but working with the windows open to get fresh air and the frequent smaller meals seem to have helped that cause as well. Which is all much appreciated by me. I'm still pretty tired, though I've been able to make it past 9 a couple times in the past week which is pretty exciting (and Saturday night I made it to 11, woo-hoo!). I haven't gotten a solid good night sleep in a while however (which is apparently something I should get used to...) so I've developed a twitch in my left eye that has not gone away for the last 8 days. So that's not really very fun. And add to that the fact that I just developed a pretty crappy cold and am snotting all over the place and I'm kind of a cranky mess at the moment. I will most likely be spending the day in bed as my nose is running like a faucet, my throat is sore and my body is oh so achy and I can barely keep my eyes open. I can't blame the cold on the Cashew, but I would enjoy a good night sleep. Happy Monday I guess.