Our Biggest Project Yet

We've been talking about it since before we moved in four years ago, and it's finally time to begin.  Before Thanksgiving?  After Thanksgiving?  Actually, we're not sure exactly when to officially begin, but we're gearing up for a really big project. 

We have two full bathrooms in the house- one up, one down.  The downstairs bath is in good shape.  It had a little makeover earlier this year.  The one upstairs supports four bedrooms, but is less than four feet wide.  There are a whole host of other things wrong with it that I will explain in great detail in a later post.  Today, I'm just going to share our plans on how we're going to take three feet out of the closetless bedroom next door to make a more spacious bathroom, meanwhile adding a linen closet on the bath side, and a closet to the closetless bedroom.

I used this free tool on floorplanner.com to map it out.  Once I played around with it for a while, I figured out how to create a basic floor plan.  I am sure there are much greater capabilities available than I've utilized in the free version.  There's also an upgraded service you can pay for, but this will do for now.  Here's the before and after:

See how tiny it is?  We're not actually making it that much bigger, but an extra foot and a half is going to make a world of difference.  (It should be noted that my floor plan failed to include the width of adding a second wall.  We may take a little more out of the bedroom to accomodate that.  Pesky details.) Our original plan was to put in a tub, but we've decided to build a spacious shower instead, since we're not bath people and we have a tub downstairs. We are also going to maximize space by using pocket doors to get into the bathroom, and the linen closet.  And we're going to bump out the ceiling and install a skylight, so we can get some light and air flow. 

So, as you can see, there's a wall that needs to come down between the bedroom and bathroom, and then two will be built back up, with closets in between.  My hero, Matt, has knocked down one wall to date, but this will be the first time he has built a new one.  He has expert guidance and is ready to accept the challenge.  I am available to assist, but I've also got the unfortunate task of removing wallpaper from the bedroom next door.  We will need a plumber and electrician along the way, but our plan is to do most of the work ourselves.

This is going to be a long project.  I'll try to share one update each week, so it's not all bathroom, all the time.  Next week I'll show you some pictures of the sad, sad rooms and what we can't wait to change about them.  Go team!

Have you ever remodeled a bathroom on your own?  Words of wisdom are welcome.