I’m starting a new thread from the inactive “remodeling sustainably” thread. I do want to have an eye towards sustainability but want to have a broader thread where we can post/debate floor plans, materials, and experiences.
Please feel free to add your own questions and remodeling plans/progress!
We’re planning to remodel our ensuite bedroom and bathroom. These designs are pending some very important information (like which walls are load-bearing).
If you have any other great ideas on how to configure this room let me know. The toilet needs to stay on that wall but can slide up or down. Sink and Shower can be moved to other locations without tooooo much difficulty.
floorplans
The two proposed designs are almost identical except for the placement of the entry door into the bedroom.
I like the idea of making a hard right into the bedroom so you don’t immediately have a view of our bed, but we are slightly worried that makes moving furniture in and out much more difficult. Thoughts?
My house has a bedroom door at 90 degrees like that. It definitely makes moving furniture more difficult, but so far hasn’t proved impossible. We were (eventually - see below) able to get our wood dresser in, which is 5 ft 8 in long, 4 ft tall, and over a foot deep.
But it was drama because our movers refused to move it because they didn’t think it would fit, so we had to hire someone off of Taskrabbit lol. If it was any bigger (like, even half an inch), it wouldn’t have fit at all.
I’m also a little concerned by the fact there’s that angle to get it inside the door, then you have to do another 90 degree turn to get it actually inside the room. Do you have any particularly big furniture pieces?
This is a great point. We have a queen size bed with a frame that can be fully disassembled, and medium size dressers that I wouldn’t be too worried about. We plan to stay here for the next 5-10 years (maybe longer) but I don’t want to screw over it’s resale value if people think the bedroom is too small/too difficult. For example, we’re being careful to leave enough space for a king + two bedside tables even though we prefer a queen.
Makes sense! I will say that moving our queen mattress in was fine, but a king mattress would have been an absolute pain in the a**, if not impossible.
Another couple of thoughts:
In the “moved door” version, does the door hinge on the left or right side? If on the left side, I think even more strongly that would make navigating furniture into the actual room really tricky.
How much light does that hallway get? Would moving the door mean removing some light from a window in the bedroom?
Kind of wiped out after two days of constant work/running around (today) – yesterday was the attic and crawlspace cleanout, and today was the first day of the whole house rewire. Everything going well so far! I really like the electrical crew – they are friendly and accomodating and very efficient. The cleanout guys were nice, too, but only one of them spoke English.
Today I bought bathroom fans, and some rechargeable LED lights for a closet (those from Costco) and some cheap outdoor sconces that I am going to return to Home Depot because the reviews were horrible. I found some others that are not TOO expensive and come in a 2-pack so I can get 2 2-packs and then have enough lights for most of my entry ways.
Gonna pop down to the p patch and water stuff, and then come home and eat/veg in front of the tv.
Oh, I put my fridge on the new battery pack that I got for car camping and it only used 2/3 of the power! And now I’m recharging it with the solar panels. It is really cool and will be useful if/when we have power outages.
So many measurements! My family uses a cad service where you take a continuous video of the entire space with an app and they convert that directly to a drawing. It’s pretty cool! But there’s been at least one wall that was 2" off (the difference between a standard 30" door being able to fit next to our stairs or needing to go down to a 28" door) so we have been confirming key measurements via tape measure.
Hi from the last mile of a big renovation project. We finally moved in 2 days ago but there is a punchlist of final odds and ends (including a basement door, a dryer, a balcony railing, drywall finish work, and a few more) still ongoing. And I’d like to get fully unpacked & organized, not just barely-functional. Hopefully I can do a big roundup with lessons learned & budget review in a couple of weeks.
This is 100% me projecting my own weird ways of living in a house, but here’s a related idea for ya. I like the moved door scenario but would shuffle the closet & shower space a bit:
Use “built-in” Pax wardrobes along the bedroom wall for your regular clothes
Which allows you to shrink the closet a tiny bit, and use it mainly for suitcases, winter coats, fancy clothes, and other infrequently accessed stuff – I like having those things separate from my day-to-day clothes
Expand the shower slightly (with stolen space from the closet)
Add a small linen closet inside the bathroom for towels, meds, plunger, toilet paper, etc.
Interesting! I love thinking through totally different ideas.
Our shower is currently 5’ x 2.5’ and the new layouts would increase that to 5’ x 4’. We have discussed going up to 5’ x 5’ but is that too big?
Similar, our bedroom is 12’ x 14’ as drawn and it would go down to 12’ x 12’ for most of the room if we extend the closet to be flush with the A/C soffet. I’d worry a bit that the bedroom is too small if we add a built-in but I’ll think on it more!
Here’s a more full view (of an earlier version) and some photos of the bedroom
All of our bathroom under sink storage is on my dresser because of a minor plumbing issue that is prompting this big remodel lol. Also, that’s a queen sized bed
For deciding on measurements & layouts, I found it helpful to (1) mentally lay out allll the things I wanted to store (2) go to IKEA and walk through various bathroom/closet layouts with a measuring tape to capture what felt big/small/spacious/cramped (I’ve realized I can’t trust my read of plans) and (3) use masking tape and Planner5D.com to lay out rooms and walk through them both IRL and virtually.
For what it’s worth, my bedroom is 10’x13’ and feels like the right size, but we have almost zero things in it: queen bed, two generous nightstands, one chair. It could fit a king bed if necessary but is otherwise pretty sparse. For many people that might feel too small but it works for us.
Do you mind sharing what app this is? I have measured a bunch of stuff manually, but having someone put together a drawing of the whole thing could be really helpful!!
There is also a bathroom and closet being added to our bedroom. Right now it is kind of a greenhouse - real roof and walls/windows, but dirt floor. I think when it was built that side of the house was direct sun but the large trees in the neighbors yard mean it isn’t anymore. We don’t use it at all currently, so I’m pretty excited for that.
drama 
