tiny bathrooms

[sepviva]

I still don't know exactly how old my house is, or if most of it was built at once, but I am confident it didn't start life with a bathroom. Or running water or sewer, let alone gas or electric. It has all that now, of course, but I'm pretty sure the one and only bathroom was once just a stair landing. It is TINY. I look up ideas for "small" bathrooms and find things for 6' x 8' bathrooms, which is laughably huge in comparison. The long wall is 6'-4", one short wall is a bit under 4'-6" and the other is not quite 4'.

Does anyone have good sources or examples of really tiny bathroom layouts, or other creative solutions? Shower instead of tub is fine. I'm thinking a bay projection might be helpful, although can't interfere with another nearby window. The bedroom next to the bathroom is a nice but not overly large size, so I would like to avoid moving the original wall between them. It would leave the bedroom oddly small. Or I could convert that bedroom to a bathroom, but it would be large and seems like a waste. There's no expanding into the hallway, it's already as narrow as it could possibly be. Sliding door is assumed, probably surface mounted in the hall to avoid the extra wall thickness of a pocket door.

I'm very familiar with required fixture clearances and code requirements, so am not looking for references to that.

[Gothichome]

Sepviva, Gothichome has a bathroom fitted to the upper landing of the servant stairs. It was separated to two separate area on the landing. The sink and water closet to one side, I know for sure. There was a small room on the other side. At this time I believe it may have been storage space or a small room. Can't confirm but I believe it held the tub. The toilet side has never been closed in, open to any one coming up the stairs. The tub room was retrofitted in 1964 with a modern green tub, the wall was taken out, probably to make room for the larger tub. Now both tub and water closet are wide open to the stairs. We are still trying to figure out how to reconfigure. The working plan at this time is to keep it two separate rooms. This requires replacing the wall at the tub end and building one to make at the other end.
You can see the pics on the thread test,test,test in the Brag area

[Lower Brambly]

If you convert the bedroom to a bathroom, would you still have three bedrooms? If you combined the space of the bedroom and the much smaller space, could you fit two bathrooms in? Or one and a half? Today's standard is a minimum of two bathrooms if you have a family with children, although lots of people manage with only one.

[Nicholas]

I have on my computer, pics of some houses that we were looking at before the one I am now in came back on the market. One of them was an original 1926 Craftsman, and the ad said it was a 3/2.

Well, one of the bathrooms was obviously jammed into a closet, tiled like a bathroom, with openings on two sides, for access to two bedrooms. This bath was 30 inches wide, about 6 feet long, toilet on one side of the two doors. You had to squeeze by the tiny sink to get into one of those 30 inch square prefab showers.

Not a big selling point.

[Wackyshack]

I have a tiny bathroom
8 ft deep and 5'6" wide.
The shower is about 32 inches wide. The potty made it within one inch of regulations.
Photo at the link

http://s166.photobucket.com/user/Wackys ... .html?o=66

[WildGeeseLn]

I have bathroom issues as well, and my solution in the end was to use an upstairs bedroom as a bathroom/washer-dryer room and make up the missing bedroom by finishing the attic as a master bedroom with bathroom. It was the only way to avoid moving original walls and still have the acceptable 2 bathrooms by modern standards. The problem was that the house as I purchased it has a half bathroom under the stairs on the first floor...which turned out to be the old hearth. I'm a sucker for a fireplace, so I decided not to keep the bathroom, but to restore the fireplace. That left the only bathroom on the second floor, in a spot that was very inconvenient for all the bedrooms (would not have originally been a bathroom). Of course, the downside is still that there is no first floor bathroom, and a bathroom in the attic bedroom ate up a lot of the space, but that was something I was willing to live with to keep walls and add a fireplace. Honestly, I could add a toilet with over-the-tank sink (like in Japan) under the stairs (hidden door in the fireplace facade, where a closet may have been anyways) after the inspectors leave.....

[matchbookhouse]

I think my 6 X 8 ft. bathroom is pretty tiny, especially as 2 sq. ft. is not usable because it has the heat pump air handler (originally the electric furnace). The space was not originally a bathroom anyway, IMO - it was a dressing room for the back bedroom. Those two rooms share unique molding that isn't anywhere else in the house. Also, if it had been a bathroom, there would not have been baseboard behind the (alcove) tub that is there now, unless they had a clawfoot tub. Anyway, I have to use an 18" deep vanity or I couldn't get between it and the tub; also, even with a round toilet it's a tight fit. My tub is only 28 in. wide as well. It is definitely not to today's code, and there's no way to configure it to make it so.

[Texas_Ranger]

6x4... hmmm. Do you enter through the short or the long wall? Preferrably I'd have the door in one of the long walls, toilet on one side (or even totally separate with another very small sink, a common size for water closets is 3 feet wide and 4 feet long, although 3x3 is barely doable if you've got short legs), the sink across the door and shower on the other side. No window but a transom to let in light from the hallway.

[phil]

I have a little toilet in the closet, with a triangular tank designed to be pushed into a corner. Maybe it is from an RV place? who knows. it was someones stupid idea to get a bathroom in the bedroom and I only keep it because when I reno the bathroom Ill use it .
lots of modern bathrooms have no shower door, the shower can be open to the bathroom provided all walls and floor are tiled and waterproof and floor is slanted appropriately, Getting rid of the door one less thing to clean. an old toilet with the tank on the wall would be nice or you can do that with a modern toilet, put the tank on the wall anyway.

Maybe it is a bonus if you can shower or wash your hands without leaving the throne


another option , forget the walls, Just use a little pony wall to hide the toilet from the bedroom and put a tub right in the bedroom. It might not work for a family with kids but if it is just husband and wife having the tub open to bedroom isn't all that bad.

[Kansas.1911]

I like your idea of a bay projection. Doing a 2' bump-out for the sink, insulated for the pipes, would be cheap, I'm told. Would it be possible to hide the tank in the bump-out? (What are your winters like?)

Our baths were wonky, too, when we got this house. The lone bathroom had been chopped into two full baths (w/tubs) of 5 x 7 each. We put it back. The half bath was squished into 17", the remainder of a hallway with a door swinging in and another door swinging in. It was a re-made butler's pantry. Just as an earlier poster said, having that half-bath on the first floor is wonderful. We closed off the door to the basement, kept the door to the kitchen, leaving a roomy 5 x 5 half-bath.

I've seen corner sinks, pictures of corner toilets, actual corner showers, and other space saving ideas. I think a bump-out is the way to go.