Small bathroom design help

I'm planning a gut and redo of our downstairs bathroom. The room is small - 6'8" deep and 6' wide - and I'm planning on taking it down to the studs and starting over.

We'd like to put in a toilet, sink, and shower; a tub is not necessary. I've got two rough layouts that I'd like comments on; pictures below. In these, the brown rectangle is the door (currently swings out, could replace with an in-swing), the blue is a window (will replace with glass block/vinyl window combination), and the gray is (I think) a pass-through for the chimney. While the chimney is not strictly necessary, tearing out out would be... extensive.

This is on the first floor of a two-story building, with full basement access. The vent currently runs up the right wall, but since I'm taking things down to the studs I could run additional lines along the walls, under the floor, or along the ceiling. Floor and ceiling joists run right to left. In the current bathroom, _nothing_ is vented; everything just ties straight in to the drain stack. So maybe it's a wet vent... yeah right. Current drain stack is cast iron, 4" diameter.

The first option, which puts tight spacing of toilet/sink for a full-width shower stall. This is in the hopes that my wife and I would get to shower together I've gone with a 32" deep stall, which I would be tiling.



The second option, which drops back to a 32x32 shower stall and has more room for an inswing door. We'd probably put a cabinet behind the chimney.




Thoughts, please!

I don't think your drawings are to scale, and I see some problems. That is a very small door!. The toilet must be centered in a space 30" wide.

If you wife is as excited about the "shower for two " idea as you are, well......more power to you!!!!!!!

Roughly 1"/1' scale. The door is 24" wide, so yeah - tiny. Which makes me wonder how they got the current tub in, now that I think about it...

In the first picture, the toilet is centered in a 36" wide space. In the second, 3' 4". Let me see if I can get dimensions...

I would seriously consider a pocket door. Swinging doors take up a lot of space in a small room.

They didn't install the existing tub after your 2' door went in...

Pocket doors suck, but might be your best option.

I prefer not to see the throne from the hallway when the door is open myself.

While I respect everyone's right to have an opinion regarding pocket doors, not all of us think "they suck". A fairly common problem presented on this forum has to do with finding a toilet that will fit in a small bathroom where the door swings in. A 30" door requires at least that much space to open and nothing can impede the swing. A pocket door is completely hidden within the wall and requires zero clearance either on the inside of the room or the outside. It may not be as desirable as a swinging door in a room that is spacious, and it may not fit your individual preference, but since a great many older homes were not constructed with large bathrooms, a pocket door makes perfect sense.

The quality of the door hardware goes a long way to determine if people will like or dislike a pocket door! Mine, I opted for a double-roller track, ball bearings, suitable for up to a 200# door...the thing glides smoothly an quietly, all I could ask of the thing.

Gary Swart said:

While I respect everyone's right to have an opinion regarding pocket doors, not all of us think "they suck". A fairly common problem presented on this forum has to do with finding a toilet that will fit in a small bathroom where the door swings in. A 30" door requires at least that much space to open and nothing can impede the swing. A pocket door is completely hidden within the wall and requires zero clearance either on the inside of the room or the outside. It may not be as desirable as a swinging door in a room that is spacious, and it may not fit your individual preference, but since a great many older homes were not constructed with large bathrooms, a pocket door makes perfect sense.

Click to expand...

You could have just said that you like them... no?

A 32" x 32" shower stall is a "telephone booth". Either go to a 36" x 36" or a 39" x 39" Neo-Angle stall. Move the sink closer to the right hand wall, (possibly making it a corner lavatory), to give better access to the toilet. You could also leave the outswing door and create a 66" "custom" shower with an angled glass door next to the chimney recess.

I'm happy leaving the outswing door. Can you sketch what you mean about the 66" custom shower? Larger showers are good

I would had loved a shower built for two! My husband and I always showered together and it was a lot of fun. But, he kept dropping the soap.

Draw a 32" wide, (or even a 34" wide one), by 36" long rectangular shower, then add an angled wall from its lower right corner to the corner of the chimney, and put the door in that section.