Door opening to bathroom

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Jetlag

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I made a mistake when I planned my bath. The door is going to hit the vanity before it opens 90 deg, I remember reading in the IRC something about the min deg but I cant find it now . if I change the swing the door will hit toilet instead of vanity . I will estimate the opening either way to be 80 deg . I have the required 21 " between the front of toilet and the front of vanity with a 24" door in the center of the path.
 

Jadnashua

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Is there any way you could convert the door to a pocket door? then, no swing at all! My preferred pocket door h/w supply is www.johnsonhardware.com. They have both internal and external tracks, if there's enough wall span. Internal is harder because of the possibility of pipes and wires, but external can work well, too.
 

Gary Swart

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Many years ago I gutted and remodeled my bathroom and I was face with a similar problem. It was obvious that the pocket door was the answer. When I built a second small bathroom in my basement, it was a no brainer. Pocket door. Seems to me that unless you have a very spacious room, a swinging door will create a space problem. As you can tell, I sold on pocket doors for bathrooms.
 

Jetlag

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Thanks for replies , I dont have quite enough wall space for the slider but it is close. I moved the wall behind vanity over 6 " . Im still not sure which is best way to swing door , either way will probably work. My thought is people might want to use the vanity with out closing the door , so might be best to swing it toward toilet. Then there are those that use toilet with door open :D
 

Nukeman

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Can you swing to the outside? Wouldn't really work if the door was in a hallway, but could if this bath was part of another room (like a master bath). I have a small basement bath that had a 24" outswing door on it. I reframed it and installed a 28" pocket door. No room for an inswing door (like yours) and I could have went with a larger outswing door, but the bath is in a corner of a larger room. In the part of the larger room where the bath is, the width is only about 9', so a larger outswing door would have taken valuable space.

The smaller 24" door made the bath feel cheap/tiny. Sure, it works, but I didn't care for it much. I would try an outswing if you have the room. It is probably better than having the door swing in and banging aganst stuff. The pocket door is a good option, but you need 2x the width of the door (+ 1") of wall space that contains no electrical/plumbing (49" for a 24" pocket door). If you have the wall space, but it contains electrical/plumbing (that can't be moved), you could also go with a pocket door that has externally mounted hardware. This solves many issues, but the style may not be what you are after.
 

hj

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Many times the door is just rehinged to swing outward, it is in my small powder room. Otherwise there is usually not enough room to get inside and then close the door.
 

Jetlag

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Many times the door is just rehinged to swing outward, it is in my small powder room. Otherwise there is usually not enough room to get inside and then close the door.

Swing out would have worked fine, it is a wall at the end of the hall , but I looked all the way through a house plans magazine and never saw a single bath with a door that swung out so I figured it must not be a good thing to do. It took some work but I moved the wall behind the vanity over 6" into the bedroom . As bad I hated to I moved the vanity plumbing down so the vanity will be 24" from the door . Now the door will clear the vanity and in the space behind the door I will build a place with shelves for towels etc . The vanity is 19 " deep and the shelve will only be 12" so the door will go back against the shelve and out of the way .
 

Nukeman

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There are usually two reasons why inswing is typical:

1. Often bath/bedrooms are accessed from a hall and having a door swing into the hall would create problems. You would have to keep the bath door closed at all times to prevent blocking the hall.

2. If the door swings out, the hinges are exposed on the outside. If you swing in, you never really see the hinges unless you are in the bathroom with the door closed. It makes for a cleaner look.

However, if you have a small bath/powder room, often you can only swing out or use a pocket door as there is just not enough room to swing in.

Sounds like you have it under control. Before you get too far, it would be a good idea to hang the door and temp install the vanity, toilet , etc. (or could use cardboard or similar to represent the size). See how it works. Try the door partially opened, try closing the door from different areas, see if the door is going to block access to anything. Although the door may clear everything, it is best to make sure that everything is functional and easy to get at with the door fully/partially opened. For instance, you may find the door clears the toilet, but you would have to stand on the toilet while closing since the door wouldn't clear you + the toilet.
 

Jetlag

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There are usually two reasons why inswing is typical:

1. Often bath/bedrooms are accessed from a hall and having a door swing into the hall would create problems. You would have to keep the bath door closed at all times to prevent blocking the hall.

2. If the door swings out, the hinges are exposed on the outside. If you swing in, you never really see the hinges unless you are in the bathroom with the door closed. It makes for a cleaner look.

However, if you have a small bath/powder room, often you can only swing out or use a pocket door as there is just not enough room to swing in.

Sounds like you have it under control. Before you get too far, it would be a good idea to hang the door and temp install the vanity, toilet , etc. (or could use cardboard or similar to represent the size). See how it works. Try the door partially opened, try closing the door from different areas, see if the door is going to block access to anything. Although the door may clear everything, it is best to make sure that everything is functional and easy to get at with the door fully/partially opened. For instance, you may find the door clears the toilet, but you would have to stand on the toilet while closing since the door wouldn't clear you + the toilet.

Thanks nukeman, If I save a drawing to my documents will it post on here , I have hesitated because I wondered how the drawing would be already open in the posts or if it would be a document to open .
 

Nukeman

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A pic would get upload to the site and attached to your post. You just need to keep the size small (I think 100kB is the limit on here?). If the pic is bigger, you can open it in Paint and use' Stretch/Skew' under 'Image'. Make the numbers under "Stretch" less than 100% and the size will reduce. Save and then check the file size. Repeat if needed.

Then to post, hit "Quick Reply" and click on the image that looks like this:

insertimage.png


Hit 'Select Files" and you'll be able to upload that pic that is saved on your comp. Let me know if you have any problems.
 
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