Tiny Bathroom – Getting a Plan together for this little Neglected space

Getting a bathroom plan together… When I started the renovation in 2014 one of the biggest conundrums I had was what to do about the main floor bathroom. If it stayed where it was (behind the kitchen) I would either have to continue accessing it through the living room and keep a VERY dangerous VERY steep staircase OR rebuild the staircase and access the bathroom through the kitchen. The staircase was typical in a farmhouse this age, it was literally like climbing a mountain and not something I wanted to do on a daily basis to the second floor master suit…

In fact, the old staircase was so steep that when I rebuilt it to standard riser height and depth it nearly DOUBLED in length! It eliminated any possible access to the main floor bathroom unless I wanted to leave it where it was and access it through the kitchen… NO WAY.

After looking at my options and working on the bathroom plan for months I ended up taking space away from the awkwardly-long living room and putting the new bathroom there. I caught a lot of flack for it from family members who felt that if you don’t have a large living room than you have nothing.

Of course I don’t agree with that at all lol!

But that doesn’t mean I was happy…

I would have preferred moving the bathroom out to the converted screened in porch but I feared the pipes would be prone to freezing every winter in the peer and beam foundation. I put the new bathroom in the only place I could and keep it on top of my basement.

Which meant I didn’t have to worry about the pipes freezing and it also meant I had a WAY easier time running the plumbing. I got to be on a ladder in the basement as opposed to being on my belly in a crawl space!

I made the new bathroom plan as tiny as possible!

In the following pic of the living room you can see before the renovation and then during and after with the addition of the bathroom. Its not like the bathroom takes up a ton of space and it did create a spot for the island and our breakfast nook…

I put in a corner shower so you don’t have to climb over the sink or the toilet to get in it. The vanity was one of my mom’s old dressers when she first moved out on her own when she was 19. Years ago I refinished it and replaced the hardware with a towel rod and knobs. (It provides decent storage too.)

Up until now I haven’t mentioned this space here since my before and after gallery (my very first blog post) back in 2015 when I moved in.

A number of reasons goes into WHY that is…

1. I’m lazy and have just been neglecting it.

2. Its so small I forget it exists and it works totally fine as is.

3. In the five years I’ve lived here I can count on one hand the number of times I think that shower has even been used…

What made me start thinking about this space was the prospect of having more guests now with the new guest bedroom complete.

I forgot to poke a hole in the sheet rock after I buttoned the house up back in 2015 so I had to make a couple of holes to find the plumbing for the shower head. I did nothing besides slap some mud over it and ignore it until now…

I’m going to start with the obvious: A TOTAL TOP TO BOTTOM CLEANING and then I’m going to give it the same treatment as in all of my main floor spaces. Spot staining (or total re-staining) of the floors and another heavy coat of polycrylic. Fix that sheetrock around the shower head, a total and complete repainting and then, finally, dressing it up!

Working in the size of this little space is going to be the challenge – wish me luck!