Pantry to Potty

One of our main concerns when we first purchased the house was the lack of restrooms. I don't know how people function without a bathroom on the first floor of their house. You expect me to share my personal bathroom with all of my guests? No way. That would mean it needs to be clean, like... all of the time.

Every single person who came through the house had an idea of "well, maybe here..." or "maybe there..." but it is SO hard to imagine a a bathroom where there was not one before. Finally, our plumber came through. We hadn't even brought up the idea of a bathroom on the first floor because we were so torn and confused about where one would go. I had already designated this space as a breakfast nook anyways. As he walked through the house, taking his initial tour he scratched his mullet and pondered aloud... "Where's your granny gonna go?" He pointed out that we had been thinking all along... when we have people over we don't want them to have to run up and down the stairs all day to use our second floor master bathroom. We needed some common ground. He stood, still pondering, in my breakfast nook and stated: This will be the bathroom.

The "Butler's pantry"

And so it was. 

"before" there was a doorway to the back of the house. You would walk down the hall, open the door and into the butler's pantry. Take a right and you were in the kitchen.

When we demo'ed the hallways and the kitchen we were already taking out a door frame and a wall on either side. We had the whole area down to the studs already. We knew we were going to need to re-plumb everything so adding this extra bathroom was actually not much of an inconvenience. 

Smashing cabinets is great stress relief!

We ran the plumbing through the backs of the bookshelves in the living room and connected to the upstairs bathroom, since we had moved everything up there and even added a shower in an old closet (eek!). We framed the bathroom in using 2x4s and a pre-assembled pocket door frame kit from Home Depot. It was James' brilliant idea to modify one of the original doors to use as the pocket door for the restroom. It was perfect since we had decided to maintain all of the older original doors and brass hardware; it looks like the bathroom has always been here.

We offset the door so that (eventually) we can hang a mirror or some artwork on the back wall, so you don't look directly into a restroom when you walk in our front door. Of course, there is a massive window in the room, as well, but fear not: dual rod curtain hardware is there to protect your modesty.

We ordered a relatively cheap bathroom vanity, mostly based on it's size. The curve of the front was intentional, we wanted to alleviate the feeling of "scooching" around the vanity when you walked in. I loved the clean look and simplicity of it. 

I happened upon a "1920's" mahogany mirror at a peddler's mall a few weeks after we moved in. Low and behold: it was a perfect fit and feel for our half bath! I love keeping with the antique and classic decor throughout the house and this was the perfect piece to compliment the modern vanity. The mahogany in the mirror perfectly matched the chestnut finish on the vanity as well.

Don't you even think about peeking at the kitchen!

To wrap it all up, in all we: removed old linoleum flooring in the butler's pantry, pulled up the subfloor, removed all of the nails (remember when I also removed my thumb nail? That was here.), tripped over the existing water lines a billion times, laid new hardwood flooring, stained and finished said flooring, removed cabinetry, framed in the walls and added drywall and a new ceiling after the window was installed and plumbing was complete, installed a can light, toilet, vanity and fixtures.

Whew! I hope you think about all of that while you are enjoying your time in this tiny little restroom.