Day 145: Evolving bathroom layout

As promised, this past weekend we came inside, washed our muddy hands, and finally got down to thinking about the basement properly. The priority right now is getting a plumber in to do the drain-waste-vent stuff and pour the floor before we get some major helping hands at the end of June. In order to bring in a plumber, we need to know exactly what we want where. Specifically, we were concentrating on choosing a shower pan since the shower drain has to fit perfectly. Through the process of clearing the space to actually picture what it might looks like and bringing in plumbers for quotes, our bathroom layout has started to evolve.

It may help if you recall the plan we submitted to the City for our permit, which featured an alcove shower and two sinks - one vanity pedestal and one utility/laundry.
Once we got the area cleared of the wood piles from the basement teardown, I roughly taped out the layout based on that plan.

Have I not told you about the laundry pedestal yet? Oh my! Keep your eyes peeled for a more-proud-than-I-should-be post on that in the near future.

We noticed some problems with this fairly quickly. There's supposed to be a sink between the shower and toilet? And the shower is supposed to be in an alcove with a door that opens towards the sink? Talk about cramped!

Please ignore the big ugly mess full of jumk that we call a laundry tub and focus on the beautiful clean concrete floor.

The step ladder, while a distraction in this photo, was to help me visualize 32" which is a shower size we were considering but have since decided is too small. More on that later. The key here is that there is just not enough room to have an alcove shower with a door and a vanity sink without feeling much too cramped. The tape showing the inside wall is actually taped too close so the shower would be even closer to the toilet.

An idea I had suggested a while back was just having one sink. Garrett made the good point that a small vanity and large utility sink serve very different purposes. I didn't really see the value in having a vanity sink, but I'm not the one that fills the sink to shave. We left the vanity in place at the time. This debate came up again last week and I somehow lured Garrett over to my camp of why-have-two-sinks-within-four-feet-of-each-other. Perhaps it was us finding a pretty nice looking utility sink that can be installed as an undermount. Perhaps it was my suggestion that we could find a nice old wash basin for his shaving. Whatever it was, we are now both quite comfortable with the idea of just one sink.

The second change that came after taping out was the realization that we could, in fact, have enough room on the exterior wall for the shower. In the previous layouts, we always put the shower on the interior wall because we thought the window would be in the way. With this realization, we started bouncing around the idea of switching the toilet and shower. It'll be tight for the shower to fit between the back wall and the window, but I really like the idea of having it on the laundry machine side of the room. So instead of two very large, imposing areas (laundry pair and shower) on opposite sides of the room, they could be on one wall. With the very tight space against the window, however, there wouldn't be room for a wall to build an alcove. But since there's no counter necessarily butting up against the shower, a corner shower with glass walls started to make a lot more sense. More glass would bring in so much more light to the shower as opposed to a wall for the alcove blocking light and imposing on the already pretty small space. And we haven't been too impressed with the shower kits we've been seeing, especially since the low ceiling really limits our options. Putting the shower in the tighter space on the exterior wall would be a nice excuse to do a custom tiled stall. Well, you can imagine how our imaginations started imagining away.

Let me now stop jabbering away and give you the goods.

Oh, we also invented invisible drawers on Saturday. No biggie.

The whole sink/counter area isn't exactly what we want to do but it's getting late and I'm learning what the word "priority" means. I threw together that shower by chopping up someone else's neo angle shower design in SketchUp so the size is probably not bang on but I think it's pretty close to what we'd end up with, around 36" on the back walls. With this in hand, I suggested that the neo angle could make a pedestal vanity sink on the back wall work if we turn the toilet to face the door. But I think the one-nice-looking-utility-sink idea has burrowed its way deep into both our brains at this point. A small shelf or table could fill a space like that nicely and provide a spot for towels, etc.

So that's where we are on the basement bathroom front. I'm learning lots about plumbing and venting and how much variety there is in any given trade as far as ideas, experience, price, and sketchiness goes. We've also spent some time in the tile section and I could talk your ear off about that but this post is already longer than expected and, as much as I like it when the clock shows four sequential numbers (like 12:34 or 23:45), it's way past bed time for a Monday night.

What do you think? Would you be happy to use a utility sink (albeit a pretty nice looking one set into the counter) as a vanity? Don't you think invisible drawers would be so disconcerting?