First Floor Bathroom Plans

Our downstairs bathroom qualifies as one of the most unpleasant rooms in the house. I will go upstairs to use the bathroom, even if I am in the living room right next to the downstairs bathroom.

This room has resulted in a lot of discussion, confusion, ideas, and changes. If you asked me a year ago what we were doing with this bathroom, I would have said we're cutting it in half.. half will be part of the pantry and the other half will be a half bathroom. We'd get rid of the tub and shower (hey, they are ugly and don't work anyways!) because we had plans to expand the bathroom upstairs and add another upstairs bathroom. But all of that will be in the future. A year later, we're now at the point where we're thinking it might be a good idea to not only have a bathtub but also have the option of a second shower.

It is a known fact that I hate the layout of this bathroom. It is awkward. It's a large room, but everything is squished in one corner, leaving more than half of the room unused. It has a massive closet that is about 1/4 the size of the room. More wasted space.. there are a lot of pipes in here and it's too deep to be of any use.

Now we're at the point where we just need to do something in this room. R is really set on keeping the tub. He also mentioned maybe keeping everything where it is and just updating the plumbing and light fixtures and repairing the walls. I let that sit for a couple days. Finally, I realized that maybe he had a good point. Someday, I plan on relocating the downstairs bathroom to the other side of the house. Where the garage and mudroom will be. So why spend the time and money now relocating the plumbing in this room? And why spend the time and money putting in new walls? What use will a small room be once I relocate the bathroom?

The answer came to me while looking at some plans I did for a house we lost before we found this house. It was the same style with a similar layout. In that house, the room where our bathroom is was a bedroom, but when I saw it I immediately said it would be my library. So I got to thinking. By the time we put on the big addition and relocate the bathroom we will hopefully have one or two kids, and that means that at least Ryan's office will be gone. Wouldn't it be nice to have a room off the Living Room where we could have a computer and desk set up plus lots of bookcases? Yes. Yes it would. So if we do that, why make the room smaller now and then expand it in the future. That would require changing the layout of my pantry, which I will hopefully have by then. It just all of a sudden seemed pointless to me.

So I spent a couple hours and came up with this layout. I love it! Now whenever I walk by the bathroom I stop for a minute and imagine the new plan in my head. Love love love!

Tub: We'll remove the tile surround, but the actual tub is in good shape. It's just a nasty color. We plan on getting a Bathfitter cover for it. The new tile surround will be white subway tile with a square blue glass tile accent strip. We'll also get a new shower head and faucet. The existing shower head doesn't work (diverter is broken).

Toilet: New toilet, but in basically the exact same spot as the existing toilet. I think we will need to put in some extra support in the basement. The floor beneath the current toilet is sloping.. perhaps partly due to the weight of the toilet, some holes in the floor for previous plumbing and maybe some water damage.

Closet: The new closet is still deeper than your average 24" closet (it's about 36" deep), but it is positioned so that the window is centered on that wall and all of the plumbing going to the second floor bathroom will be concealed inside the closet. The inside will be all shelves, for towels and extra supplies.

Radiator and Window: Don't move at all. We'll just give them a new coat of paint.

Vanity and Tall Cabinet: I love the look of furniture in the bathroom. Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware make some vanities that are made to look like a piece of furniture, not just cabinetry. I've seen a lot of pictures of refurbished dressers being used as vanities. This is something I might consider. Otherwise, it will be something we'll build ourselves, with a granite or marble countertop and under-mount sink. The tall cabinet next to the toilet will have the toilet paper holder attached to it, plus lots of open shelving for baskets and other knick-knacks. It will be made by us.. either to match the vanity we built, or built to match a piece of furniture we buy and re-purpose.

Walls: The walls will be tall (5') beadboard with a shelf on the top. The shelf will only be about 3 or 4" wide, but deep enough to display small things. I love the look of this. It's the one thing that has never changed in my vision for this room. I'm thinking a blueish green for the walls.

Floor: The existing wood floor will stay. It is currently painted and I don't think we'd be able to remove the paint without destroying the floor, so most likely we will be repainting it, despite my dislike for painted wood floors. A large rug will go in the center of the room.

By relocating the sink, we are pulling that side of the room together with the tub/toilet area. Now it is just a big empty space, but by having the center of the room be large and empty, it'll help make the room seem smaller.. more to scale with a bathroom.

Kitchen Floor

We have been without a kitchen floor for a year now. This was the floor when we bought the house:

It matched the actual brick hearth just so well. For some odd reason though, the floor just wasn't for us. Not sure if it was the fact that it was so dirty it was a completely different color underneath the cabinets (so different it looked like a completely different floor) or the fact that it was just flat out hideous.

I first started tearing it up in September of last year. Thanks to a heat wave, I didn't get much done. I got back at it after Christmas, using a Christmas present from my mom. It is not fun work. R kept telling me I was wasting my time. He felt that it would be okay to put the new floor over the lovely brick. I, for some reason, just wanted it gone.

So this has been my kitchen floor for the past 9 months.... That's four kinds of flooring you're seeing there.. Brick, brick underlayment, another type of brick, and dirty nasty plywood. Nice, huh?

In May I got a quote from a contractor I work with to tear up the existing plywood (with brick) and the original sub-floor that is underneath. They would then put down either some new plywood or the existing plywood. While this seems pointless, it would make it so that our kitchen floor isn't raised up 2" from the other rooms. While the quote was very very fair, it was just too much for us to spend right now. We're still considering this..

We did make a step in the whole "get S an actual floor" process. We actually picked out a floor! That we like! And won't look fake. Pretty much every floor we found in our price range just looked ridiculous next to our 240 year old 20" wide floors.

This floor is Bruce's Cliffton Plank Cherry. It's a 5" wide 3/8" engineered hardwood. It can be glued down or installed as a floating floor. It can also be installed on plywood, wood, concrete or vinyl flooring.

We had narrowed it down to 3 different color choices. Copper Kettle (shown above), Sangria and Ponderosa. After having the samples sitting on our kitchen floor for about 3 weeks, and asking everyone who came to our house, we finally decided on Copper Kettle. It goes well with the Living Room and Dining Room floors (which are different colors), but doesn't exactly match, which is good because it doesn't look like we were trying to match it exactly. It also looks great with our kitchen table and my baking cabinet, which both have cherry tops.

Designing A Chicken Coop

I spent all day today designing our chicken coop. The chicks have been ready to go outside for over a week now.. They're getting too big for the playpen and a little smelly. My Dining Room is definitely ready to be rid of them too. The room is covered in a corn dust from their food. If I clean everything, it's covered in dust again in less than an hour. It's ridiculous!

My mom offered to buy us a coop as a wedding anniversary present (our anniversary is in June). She gave us a set amount, and had a coop in mind, but told me to look around online to see if I could find something else I liked. I found a couple really cute coops that were in the price range, but according to user reviews, only fit 2 chickens comfortably. We currently have 5 (though 2 or 3 we'll be giving away), but we expect to get more in the near future. The coops that would fit more chickens were crazy expensive... even if my mom was offering that much I could never spend that much on a coop.

So... I went back to my original idea. Converting our shed into a coop. We have the cutest little shed in our yard by the woods. It isn't being used now and it's far enough away from our neighbors houses that they won't bother anyone. It even has a window.

I decided to only dedicate half of the shed to the chickens. The other half would be perfect for storage... both chicken storage and garden storage. Even though we aren't using it now, I figure if I put up shelves I'll be more likely to use it. We also made the decision to put the outside play area off to the right, hidden by the woods and shed. When we put in a fence for Madison, we'll be more comfortable letting the chicks free-range, but until then, they'll have their fenced in outside area. This will also be better for when we go away on weekends or on vacation. They'll still be able to go outside but we won't need to worry about them getting out or being eaten. After many many hours, this is what I came up with:

The coop will take up half of the interior space. The storage space will be in the front. We'll also put a plywood "roof" on top of the coop that we could use for large storage tubs. There will be human doors outside and inside. We will be insulating the walls and ceiling and then installing plywood over the insulation. On the floor we're going to putting down vinyl roll flooring, which will make it easy to clean with a mop or hose. I'll be putting hay over the vinyl floor.

Kitchen Fireplace

Most design decisions for the house have come to me pretty easily. However, the Kitchen fireplace is driving me crazy. I love it so much... but can't decide if I want to paint it white, like the cabinets, doors, and trim/casing, or if I want to paint it a colonial, dusty blue. I would also paint the built in cabinet the same color as the fireplace.

From James Kroll Fine Woodworking website

From Covenant Kitchens

We work a lot with Covenant Kitchens for work... and there is a display cabinet similar to the one above in their showroom that I love. I think the color is very colonial, and would fit with the style/age of the house.

From Covenant Kitchens

I feel like adding a new color for these two elements would help break up the amount of white in the room, and help make the eating area more cozy. 

I did this quick rendering of the fireplace and cabinet in blue.. the walls will be yellow and the trim will be white. What do you think? Blue? White? I need to make a decision soon... it needs to be painted soon!!