Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Tiny Bath, Big Ideas

It’s funny how things work sometimes. After commiserating the other night with Jen of Dogs and Jen on trying to maximize space in a tiny bathroom, I took some photos of how we opted to keep the original door off of our bathroom (taken off a few years ago when we did a second round of redos in there).


Instead, we replaced it with a louvred door that folds at the corner. (The original is in storage downstairs.) You can’t imagine the difference it made in what little floor space there is in there. Enough to accomodate that little table for starters, something that helps make up for the vanity storage we lost when we switched to a pedestal sink.

The door no longer seems weird to us, so I decided to take some pictures and blog a bit about it. As I prepared to take a few shots, I stared at the tub in disgust. I think I’ve mentioned that it needs reglazing. And the fiberglass surround is in desperate need of recaulking, something I’ve staved off with, what else, duct tape. (Yeah, I’m appropriately embarrassed.) And while it’s still fairly shiny and nice for the most part, nearly 15 years of use has put in some cracks and gouges. Ugly. That’s what I was thinking about when I shot this photo.





Tight squeeze, isn’t it? Under that table to the left, is Toby’s litterbox.






Off to the right, is the sink.







I consoled myself with the notion that you just can’t do everything, as much as you might like to.

Imagine my surprise then when last night, our attention was suddenly drawn to a display of tub surrounds. Some of them were absolutely gorgeous, And the beauty was that they weren’t nearly as expensive as I thought they would be. There was one in particular that the mother and I both liked. You can bet it will be a discussion topic with Lawrence tomorrow.

Here’s the door closed.



It’s worth mentioning that I had to walk into the livingroom to shoot this. The hall is quite narrow. And here’s the door open.







That other door, over to the left, that’s the mother’s bedroom door. So, yeah, it’s really limited space.




If we do end up replacing the surround, I’m not tiling the floor until that’s done. For now, I’ll focus on getting the ceiling up.

So, we’re doing both the kitchen and bath from the top down! Let the fun begin.

5 comments:

Kristy said...

I completely understand your bathroom misery. Living in a 110 year old house, the bathroom is located on what was the backporch . Now enclosed-obviously; but remember back then everyone used an outhouse. Needless to say, the entire floor is leaning to one side, crumbling underneath and is no bigger than 5x8. Eventually, I want to update this room; but for now I've grown accustomed to the craziness. Hang in there!

Jayne said...

I understand, too, and just like Kristy, my bathroom's where the back porch used to be. It's just over 3' wide, but it's nearly 11' long! The shower is incredibly tiny. Can't wait for pics to see how yours turns out.

NV said...

Kristy -- Thanks. It's exciting and overwhelming and EXHAUSTING but I can hardly wait to finish these two rooms! Having a 110-year-old house is VERY cool. Ours is nearing 70.

Jayne -- I guess that's what they had to do to "modernize" then, huh? Your bathroom is only 3 feet wide? Wow. Old homes sure do challenge us, don't they?

Why S? said...

The upside of having a bathroom that size is that it encourages you to keep the pounds off. Right?

To expand our master bath, we had to remove a linen closet that opened on the hallway. So now we have a decent bathroom, but zero extra storage. Our guest bath is also petite and is also on what was once the back porch! But it was an add-on, added to benefit the 2nd bdrm that once had an exterior entrance.

NV said...

Why -- Wow! I seem to be in lots of good company at least. the other upside is that you CAN buy pricier materials (like tile) because you need so little of it.