A Tub with a View
We never know what sort of challenges each new project will bring. The clients might have unique design goals, or functional needs that are tricky to implement within the available space. And sometimes (often, actually), the house itself has odd quirks that need to be addressed.
This project falls into that last category. It’s a beautiful custom home with unobstructed Puget Sound views, but the primary bathroom had an unusual layout that didn’t exactly meet the needs of the current homeowners. Fortunately, with relatively minor structural changes, we were able to make a major impact.
We had two main goals with this bathroom:
Goal 1: Open up the views. The bathroom has a large window that looks directly onto the water, but it was partially hidden behind a laundry room that jutted into the middle of the room.
Goal 2: Move the bathtub out of the adjacent office and into the bathroom. Yes, that’s right: The bathtub was in the office/craft room, accessed through a secondary bathroom door.
BEFORE: The double doors leading into the bathroom revealed only a partial, off-center view of the window. One of the entry doors opened into a wall, while the other bumped into the door to the closet.
AFTER: The new single door is now centered directly on the window, so the entire view is revealed upon entering the bathroom. We didn’t remove the WC/laundry room, but we made it smaller so it doesn’t dominate the room.
BEFORE: The original tub was huge, taking up a large section of the office. The flooring around the tub was tile, but the rest of the office and the bathroom were carpeted.
AFTER: With the tub gone, the office/craft room now has space for his-and-hers work areas, each with its own view of the water.
Solution #1: Cut the Laundry Room to Half its Size
To meet our goal of revealing the view, we shrank down the size of the WC/laundry room. Originally, it had a separate toilet and bidet at one end of the room, and a side-by-side washer and dryer at the other end. The new room is half the width, with a single bidet toilet and a stacked washer and dryer.
We also eliminated the double doors at the entry to the bathroom, re-using the existing door from the second entrance and centering it on the window and the peak of the ceiling. The result is a clear view from the entry to the window.
BEFORE: The shower was once a steam shower, but the steam function was inoperable when the current owners bought the house.
AFTER: The new shower is roughly the same size, constrained in width by the window, but it feels much more open and spacious.
BEFORE: Molded acrylic seating and a dropped ceiling made the original shower dark, cramped, and awkward to use.
AFTER: The new curbless shower has a wall of frameless glass and a single floating bench seat made of quartz.
Solution #2: Add a Freestanding Tub
Meeting the second goal was easy: We removed the giant tub from the office, and added a standalone tub in the bathroom, centered under the window. We needed to select a small enough tub so that the shower and the vanity cabinets are fully accessible, but it is a full-sized tub, with extra depth for comfortable soaking.
We also eliminated the door between the bathroom and the office, so the bathroom now has a single entry door. This gave us room to expand from two small vanities to one larger one spanning the entire side wall, with tall linen cabinets for ample storage.
BEFORE: The off-center door to the tub limited the sizes of the two vanity cabinets.
AFTER: The new vanity cabinets provide more counter space as well as extra storage.
BEFORE
AFTER
A few additional details to note:
One linen cabinet holds a pullout laundry hamper, directly across from the washer and dryer.
We re-used several items that the homeowners loved, including the glass vessel sinks and the wall art. The original light fixtures were moved to another bathroom.
The new, smaller WC/laundry room has a pocket door for easy access.
A cabinet above the bidet provides extra storage for laundry supplies.
Plumbing fixtures include a fixed showerhead plus a handheld shower on a slide bar.
The walk-in shower includes a hidden linear drain across the back wall.
With the door centered, there’s now a straight shot from the front of the house to the back.
