If you’re the type of person who doesn’t like messing around with floor plans and considering everything (and I mean… aa …) of the possibilities, these next few weeks may drive you absolutely crazy. You may want to log off for a while and check back in a few weeks to see if I’ve gotten past this phase and made progress toward implementing a plan.
Because right now, all I can do is think about the possibilities. My brain doesn’t stop. I wake up in the morning thinking about possibilities. I consider them all day while I’m working. My mother and I talked about them over lunch yesterday. I talked about them with friends last night. I go to bed at night thinking about them.
I get really excited about trying out different designs and thinking about the different suggestions people give me. And you guys gave me A lot I got to thinking about this in Monday’s post. And there was one suggestion in particular that caught my eye and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. The suggestion was to move the guest bathroom into the pantry area.
I’m sure at some point, someone else probably suggested this, and I immediately dismissed it because, again, that floor is a concrete slab foundation. So, doing anything there that requires plumbing is going to cost more, take longer, and be a huge disruption to our lives. So, it’s entirely possible that someone has mentioned it before, and I dismissed it without a thought. I can’t even explain why I dismiss a suggestion over and over again, and then it takes that last time someone suggests it and I decide to consider it. No one can explain how my mind works, least of all me.
But when I read this suggestion, I decided to give it a try. I wasn’t even sure what problems (if any) that change would solve, but the idea intrigued me, so I gave it a try. I decided immediately that it would have to be a full bathroom. If anyone ever needed to stay with Matt, I could have a sleeper sofa in the TV room, but I would hate for them to have to use our bathroom. So, this guest bathroom would have to have a shower.
Also, it would have to be accessible through the kitchen because I don’t want that many doors in the TV room. I need at least one solid, uninterrupted wall. Also, it’s weird that guests would have to use a bathroom that’s accessible through a door right in the area where people gather. It’s usually best to have it a little ways away from the main room, at least. That’s why they’re usually off a hallway.
If I did, it would look like this. Don’t pay too much attention to the layout of the bathroom itself. I haven’t given it much thought yet. But the overall layout of the bathroom would look like this.
My question is this: how weird is it to have a guest bathroom off the kitchen? I know I’ve seen it before, but they’re mostly guest bathrooms. And even then, I don’t know how common that is. So tell me. Is it weird to have a bathroom off the kitchen?
I’ve never lived in a house with a bathroom next to the kitchen, so I’m not sure how I feel about that. What I love about that idea is that it allows all the “public” areas of the house to be on one side. It makes sense to have the guest bathroom closer to the TV room, dining room, and kitchen. And I also love that by moving the bathroom, I’d have these areas free to organize however I needed.
The areas I’m trying to include in this floor plan are (1) guest bathroom, (2) laundry room, (3) plenty of closet space, (4) a workout area. And what I love about the idea of moving the guest bathroom out of its current location and closer to the other “public” areas of the house is that it would basically turn this entire pink area into the master suite. None of it would be “public” anymore. This entire end of the house would be the master suite for me to arrange however best suits us. That would leave the laundry room, plenty of closet space, and a workout area that would need to fit into these areas.
And if it helps, you could even knock down the wall between the current hallway and the hall bathroom to create a more open area at the entry to the master suite.
I’m just thinking about ideas, so I don’t know if that’s possible. I’d have to go up into the attic and see if it’s a load-bearing wall. I think it is, so I don’t know what would have to be done to open it up completely. But it would definitely make a nice workout area, and it would make sense to have it there as part of the master suite.
But my main question today is about the guest bathroom placement outside the kitchen. Again, I know I’ve seen guest bathrooms outside kitchens before. Does that seem odd to you? Have you had a house with that layout before? Let me know what you think about it.
Addicted 2 Decorating is a place where I share my DIY and decorating experience while remodeling and decorating the 1948 home my husband Matt and I purchased in 2013. Matt has multiple sclerosis and is unable to do physical labor, so I do most of the work around the house alone. You can learn more about me here.
