Sixth House Renovation Plan - The Master Suite
Welcome! In the last post we went through the renovation plans for the upstairs hall bath. Today we are going to take a look at the plans for the master bedroom, bathroom, and closets. There is a fair amount of space in the "master area". There is a sitting area as part of the bedroom, two walk in closets, and a large bath housing a tub, shower, two sinks/vanities and a water closet. True to form for the house there are angels and peaked ceilings as well as a lot of sloped ceilings in there too.
To get us into the spirit, here are the listing photos from when we purchased the house.
Master bedroom:
Master sitting area:
View to bathroom from bedroom:
View of one closet, one vanity on the shower side:
View of other closet and both vanities. I just have to say I never could have taken this picture with three mirrors and not be seen - impressive!
View of tub and shower, the WC is to the right of the tub:
Something not shown in the listing photos are the pillars that separate the master sitting area from the bedroom area. Here comes another picture to give you a hint of how we're living in this house. We have not yet taken down the valences and John has thrown a towel at the top of the window to be moved around as necessary to block the sun when he is on Zoom calls. Please don't judge too harshly, although whatever you're thinking is probably tame compared to my daily thoughts!
You may have noticed that the peak of the ceiling on the bedroom side of the room is not centered with the window in the sitting area (it may technically be centered with the entire floor space of the sitting area). Keeping with the angles and peak themes of the house though, you may also have observed that the ceiling in the sitting area is flat and then sloped with the angled side on the right ending at the wall and the side on the left leveling out, giving more space to that side of the room. You may recall from the last post that I considered using that space to create a new hallway to "bedroom 4" (Bedroom One in earlier posts) to add a second hall bathroom. The final off-center pièce de ré·sis·tance is the cutout at the top of the pillars - it doesn't match anything on the bedroom side of the room. It looks far more intentional on the sitting room side - you mostly look at it from the bedroom side though so it's weird (to me).
Here is the blueprint of the entire space to help piece it all together:
Okay, we have just seen what we have to work with and this is what I would like to do to renovate the space:
Remove the pillars separating the sitting area from the bedroom
Turn the closet on the right (when looking at the tub from the bedroom) into the laundry room
Customize the remaining closet to maximize storage/usable space
Replace the existing tub with a free standing tub
Expand the shower to the same depth as the WC
Expand the shower length into the existing storage closet, installing a bench under the sloped ceiling*
Move the shower head to the tub side of the shower
Remove the "plant shelf" above the vanity next to the WC
Replace the existing vanities with two L-shaped vanities to improve symmetry and storage
Just a few changes!
Initially, before we moved in and reality began to sink in a bit, I wanted to expand the size of the two closets to have a larger master closet, since there would now only be one, and a larger laundry room. This would have resulted in less space between the vanities and the shower on one side and WC on the other. Ultimately I decided that although it would be lovely to have the laundry and closet larger, it wouldn't make enough of a difference to justify the expense.
I also wanted to build a wall with pocket doors to provide separation for the office/sitting area from the bedroom area. After living here a bit I decided I would rather have full access to the light from the window in the sitting area (the front of the house does not get much sunlight throughout the day) and that I could visually separate the spaces with furniture placement instead.
Here are my first drawings. (*These were before living here and before I had the idea to bring the shower into the closet space)
The drawings with red pencil indicating structural changes:
Here are the drawings of my designs from our architect, Brenda Parker:
Following are some renderings of cabinetry, fixtures, etc.:
The tub wall:
The inside of the shower. Since I want to build a bench (for leg shaving!) under the sloped ceiling side - the side where the current shower head is - I have put the shower head in a column to house the plumbing with glass panels on both sides.
The sink wall, facing the bedroom, across from the tub.
The shower side of the L part of the vanity.
The WC side of the L-shaped vanity.
The laundry room (this is the wall that is shared with the bedroom).
The laundry room sink (this is the exterior wall).
Here are the plans as one complete space:
Our final stop on the image journey is my red lined mark ups of the listing photos and blueprints. I tried to keep it really simple today!
The view from the bedroom:
The shower side vanity:
The WC side vanity:
A closer view of the shower and tub:
Lastly, the changes marked on the blueprints:
I have some potential tweaks to these plans that I have been considering while living here that we will talk about in the decorating posts. In the meantime, we have one more area to talk about renovation plans for and that is the basement.
I hope you're on board with the changes to the master and I really hope you keep coming back!
Thank you for visiting today,
Kerry
