Nother Top Floor Idea

Okay Here we go again....
Guess what? All those groovey diagrams our architect did? He mis-read the dang scale, so in his drawings the space is much bigger than it really is!!! Sooooooooooo....none of his ideas are going to work!!!! Hurray!!!!
We gave him correctly scaled papercopies of the floor for him to sketch his ideas on. He's supposed to come back to us on Tues with all new super-fab ideas.... we'll see how that goes...

Can you tell that I'm a little cheesed off?



Here's our latest idea for the top floor.





We're pretty settled on the kids room and the kids closet being the way it is. The kids bath size is pretty settled but not the exact lay-out of the bath.

Opened up some space in the master-bed by getting rid of the couch and table and putting in a big window seat with big pull-out drawers underneath. We both really like the idea of having somewhere comfy to read that's not in bed. The closets on either side of the window seat are kinda optional but we like how they frame in the window seat.

We got rid of the door at the top of the stairs and turned the queens closet #2 into a shallower linen closet. Hopefully this will make this area less cramped feeling? We also are trying to make more use of pocket doors.

Still have the closets in the dormer. There is 4' between the bed and the wall on the tight side that gives me 2' for a nightstand and 2' for a pocket door. This does not sound ridiculous to us?

Didn't really screw anymore with the master bath.

Now that the 'pro' has the real dimensions of the space we'll see what he can come up with...

If anyone else wants to take a stab at designing out our top floor please use the diagram in this post it is correctly scaled-with dimensions.-thanks

New Top Floor Design Ideas

Check out our most recent ideas for what the heck we are going to do with our top floor and see what one experts thoughts are.

Here's the original floor plan for the top floor of the house. This floor has been totally gutted remember. Shoot I just realized that this diagram has incorrectly scaled dimensions, so don't pay attention to those...

Here's what the top floor looks like now-its gutted to the studs.

We've decided that we want to do the entire top floor as private family space. On this floor we are going to need to find space for;the master bed-bath, enough closet space for two adults, a kids bedroom-bath and a laundry room...plus as much random storage as we can pack in. We've added a dormer opposite the existing dormer and put our closets in it. We kinda like the idea of having windows in the closets. Not sure about the sizes though. Putting the bath were we did in the 'kids room' squeezes the size down but it still seems like a pretty good sized room.

We are giving a local arch. a try. He's a retired prof of arch from some university in OR which I can't remember right now.
Here's his two first shots at designing out the space. We don't know if we like the way he's turned the Master Bedroom into a turny-twisty path. We still are not convinced that we need two sinks. Why put the kids closet where it is when we have the closet in the hallway that can be used? Seems like we are squeezing down the size of the kids room doing it this way.

This idea is different. The closet in the middle of the room with the TV isnt something that would of occured to us.
The separate shower is interesting also. The toilet kinda recessed might be good too?




So what do y'all think? Got any great ideas for this space? If so we'd love to hear them.



Our pal and neighbor Ayse came up with this mix of ideas. Ayse had this to say
I was looking at your architect's plans and realized that a nice combination is this mix of the two: you get a nice long sight line through the upstairs. I'm attaching my cut-n-paste of the plan. You could also forgo the closet in the kid's room and just put in a wardrobe, or steal some of the space from that storage area right there (the low ceiling part would be a place for shelves and shoe
cubbies) to make a closet.

I like this configuration of the master bath better than the one with a separate entrance for the shower, but I would break the sink counter and add a wall with a frosted glass pocket door between the two "rooms" (shower/sink area and toilet/tub area), so you could have two people using both spaces to their fullest. And I'm not sure I see the purpose of two doors into the shower, but maybe that is an artifact from cutting and pasting; you could use that corner area as a closet or just widen the bedroom.

One thing I don't like is the shelf beyond the tub. My experience with such things is that they end up being dirty and hard to get to for any useful purpose (since you have to climb into the tub to get to the space). If the ceiling is too low there for the tub to move further west, I'd suggest you just box it in (a flush lightbox can make a nice way of making the wall more interesting). If it's tall enough, a small window there next to the tub would be cute. Actually, if you did a little dormer over the tub and scooched it west, you'd get extra headspace and more light and no dust shelf (that's what I heard a real estate agent call them!).

The toilet in a recess is not optimal -- you end up having to work in a tight space when you need to do repairs. On the other hand, it's a shallow recess and does pull the toilet out of the middle of the room.

Help! We need design help!

We are realizing that he have to step up our time table for remodeling-restoring our house. We can't afford to have it go on for-ever. The first step in having a project not go on forever is of course to have a well thought out overall plan......we don't have one of those yet really...so we could use a lot of help. Please see the illustrations and notes below.

If we use one of your ideas you will receive a super-fabulous Chez Neumansky themed prize!

Here's the first floor of our house. We have to call it 'unit A' cause the city considers the house a tri-plex with each level being a separate unit. So, the bottom floor is Unit A the middle floor is Unit B and the top floor is Unit C.

<- Here's the bottom floor. This is the floor we just reconfigured when we re-did the foundation. This floor is pretty set in stone at this point but we are open for ideas on how to get an interior stair up to the 2nd level. This pic shows a spiral stair in the laundry area but we are not married to that idea, that's just the best idea we could come up with...

<-Here's the middle floor of the house. Here we need major help in the kitchen area. We need to figure out how to fit everything in there. We need it to be an eat-in kitchen also and fit a 5'by3' table. We are not against moving-changing windows-walls-doors to make the kitchen work.

We also need to figure out how to get a stair down to the bottom level with out totally screwing up the flow and original character of the house. The kitchen and sun porch have already been stripped of any original details, those rooms can be changed the most. The Front two rooms and bedroom are original and we are loath to mess with them too much.

<- Here's the top floor of the house. Remember we gutted this floor in the de-stankification of the house. This shows our proposed idea for a bathroom but we are open to new ideas.

Basically, we want the top floor to function as our 'master bedroom retreat' (man I sound like I am trying to sell a house in Danville). To us that means a bedroom, an office-den, a bathroom and lots of storage.

Irene does not like the set-up shown above because when one person gets up way earlier than the other they have to walk over to the closet area, then walk back over across the bedroom to get to the bathroom. She thinks that it will be impossible to not piss off the person still trying to sleep....since that person is usually me she might be right....

So that's it we would appreciate any useful suggestions that y'all have. If you are really interested I have pdfs of the floors above also but I can't figure out how to put them on the blog for downloading? If you would like the pdf versions please send me an email and I'll mail 'em right out to ya.

Big Red Done Stamp on the Master Bath Design!!!

If anybody reading this gets the reference in the title you are super cool!!!
Its not like we are going to be able to actually start on the master bath anytime soon but we've come to a decision on how we are going to do it at least. We are going to have lots of tile. A good friend of ours is working at a tile shop and we can get his discount which is getting the tiles at cost which is like half off retail!! Woo-hoo we can afford tumbled marble or some such extravagant thing...


Here's are neat little plan view of the bathroom with the dimensions.
We are going to get rid of the middle window and stick the vanity-mirror thing there.
I figured out how to do a kooky birdseye rendered view so you can get an idea how its going to look. I have no idea what the color scheme is actually going to be I'm just goofing around here.
Here's the view from the steam shower out. Yep the steam shower is going to be pretty big. Big enough for at least 3...yay party in the steam shower!!! The benches will be great for lying on and taking a steam.

Here's the view from the tub looking back into the room. yep lots of tile....

So that's our final draft of the master bath, please let us know what you think we do consider all opinions when we are designing this stuff.

Our Master Bath Needs You!!!

Dang I must be bored out of my mind to do three blog posts in one night!!

Our master bath needs your help!! Its a weirdly shaped space and I really have no good idea on how to make use of it. The space is 17' wide and 6' deep. At the edges the knee wall is 3' 5" high and the roof is a 12/12 pitch. This is our first stab at a design and I am not happy with it. We gotta fit the clawfoot tub, a toilet, a decent sized vanity and the steam shower all up there in this weird space under the eves and I am stumped. No really, I'm stumped how we gonna fit all that stuff in there and have it be usable?


Here's the view if you were siting on the bench in the steam shower. I guess I like green tile? The toilet-vanity-tub are too close toghether and I don't know how to get more room.

Here's the view you would see if you were siting on the pot... There is 1' 7" inches between the toilet and the vanity...is that enough?
There is a whopping 1' 6" between the tub and the vanity...that can't be enough can it?


As you can see Irene and I could really use your help. Got any ideas on how to best utilize this space? We would really love to hear them. If you have the winning design or we use part of your design a fabulous prize awaits you!!!!


Seriously Hellllllp!
George from the Old House List gave me this idea for a redo. I have to admit it works a lot better. The only thing is, the bath vanity is up against a window. Where do you put the mirror? The windows are non original so I would not feel bad about losing the middle mirror so we could have a nice vanity-mirror cabinet thing there...