Adding first floor full or half bath?
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Anonymous
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We live in a 3 bed 1 bath DC row house, built in the 1890s. We're planning an addition and will add a bathroom. We are not interested in changing the current layout and the existing bedrooms, or removing space from the existing layout to add a bathroom. The only feasible place to add a bathroom is on the first floor, in a new room alongside the kitchen which will likely be used as a dining room. There are no bedrooms on the first floor. Would it be strange for this bathroom to be a full bath? Likely without a tub, but with a shower.
We're definitely going to add at least a half bath there but are considering the potential of adding a full bath with shower instead even though it's an unconventional location. Any thoughts on how this might impact resale? We wouldn't plan to sell for 5-10 years, but would it be more appealing to have two full bathrooms even if one is not conveniently located vs. one full bathroom alongside bedrooms plus one half bath downstairs? There are very few houses remaining in our neighborhood with just one bathroom, and most have more than 1.5. |
Anonymous
| Would you use the shower in the there? We have a similar house and we put a full bath in the finished basement which works for guests since they can sleep on a pull out couch there. I think that is a better investment. I would just do a half bath if there are no bedrooms/guest spaces on the main floor. But maybe talk to some agents and see what they think in terms of resale. |
Anonymous
| I saw a house this summer that had 3 BR, 1 BA upstairs and a very nice new full bath downstairs, off of the kitchen. (it had a bath and a bidet, of all things.) It was a little odd, but it would not have stopped me from buying the house, and the extra bathroom definitely would have been handy. (we didn't buy the house because I hated the location.) |
Anonymous
| We bought a house that had been expanded twice, and wound up with a full bathroom off the dining room. The previous owners had added a family room adjacent to a first-floor master with giant bath, but it was a really awkward layout and the bedroom worked much more sensibly as a dining room. A few people have commented but mostly because it's a freaky 1980s master bath with a jacuzzi and groovy maroon and grey tile! There is an office/den on the other side of the bathroom, so whenever we redo it we will keep the shower and tub (at least a regular one) so that the den could be used as a small bedroom. I should note that the shower doesn't get a ton of use but I wouldn't have bought a house without two baths, so it was a selling point for us. Just one other point from our experience: if you do put in a full bath off the dining room, don't overplay the spa-ness of the room (which seems to be the style of baths these days in general) - obviously our previous owners were going for that and it just seems ridiculous given the placement. |
Anonymous
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Would the dining room be only a dining room? Where do you eat now? If the new room could be a combo -- dining room/office/guest room, the full bath would make more sense.
We have friends with a bathroom (shower only) in the addition, and it does get used -- it's useful when someone comes in sweaty or dirty from the outdoors or is trying to get ready very quietly early in the morning. |
Anonymous
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Some useful input, thanks. Our basement is unfinished and tiny so not at all feasible as a location for a bathroom. If we do it, it would likely be small and entirely tiled as a wet room (without a shower enclosure). I'm sure we would use the shower, but would definitely benefit more from having a toilet on that level. I guess the shower would get more use when our kids are older and there's more demand on the one bathroom, even if the location is a little odd.
Another question, which is preferable a small dining room with a small bath with shower or a larger dining room and just a half bath? I do need to talk with a realtor about resale, but in the meantime input here is really useful. |
Anonymous
The room will be off the kitchen, but the kitchen will open out into it (somewhat open plan). It wouldn't be a seperate room as we envisage it and per my initial discussions with our architect (it could be, but the design would be weird and the kitchen would have no daylight and we're not interested in moving our existing kitchen which was renovated in the last five years) - so it definitely would not be a guest room. It would also be relatively small -- we'd have 12'x13' to play with for the new room AND the bathroom. We'll either move our existing dining room to that room, or it will be a sitting/hanging out area with some play space for the kids. It will open out on to the back yard with patio doors and some big windows. Lots of reasons why it would be a strange spot for a bathroom! Still, the issue is whether having a second bathroom in a strange location is better than not having one at all! |
Anonymous
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We used to have a full bath on the main floor and as part of a recent renovation we replaced it with a 1/2 bath. We had two upstairs though so hard to say if we would have used it if it was our second bath. In ten years we'd used the shower only once, and mainly used the shower to store stuff. We moved the full bath to the basement, where there had been only a 1/2, and now it gets used quite frequently.
As to the dining room question I guess it depends on your lifestyle. We use ours a lot so we put a priority on a big dining room. In fact cutting the full bath to a half bath on the main floor bought us some space in the DR, which was good. There isn't anywhere upstairs to add a full bath, even a small one? Our architect was pretty creative about use of space so you may want to consult a professional on this. |
Anonymous
| My dad's house in another state is like this -- addition with a shower downstairs and one full bath upstairs. The thing is - it sucks as a guest bc I don't really want to be running up and downstairs in my towel or whatever. I don't know. I think it would be better for resale to keep the dining room big and just add a half bath downstairs. |
Anonymous
| hmm. When we bought our house a couple of years ago we were only looking at houses that had at least 2 full baths. We saw one that had advertised 2 full baths, but the 2nd full bath was a very large bathroom off the dining room. We thought it was very strange. We couldn't see how it could really be used. I would think a bigger room with a 1/2 bath is a better choice. Keep in mind if you are in an old house, your hot water heater may not really be able to handle two people showering at once anyway. |
Anonymous
From a resale perspective i would say a bigger DR and half bath. Would the bathroom actually open into the DR? I would avoid that. When we redid our kitchen we put up a wall between the kitchen area and the hall where the half bath was so someone coming out of it wouldnt be seen. We moved the entrance etc. A good architect will help figure this out. A full bath on the first floor is generally odd to me unless its a big house. But if you are living there a long time - you cares - you do what you need. |
Anonymous
We have an excellent architect - although we do not have plans at this stage, we have just discussed it in detail. There's definitely space if we reconfigure the existing layout. We don't want to do that, partly because our house was built in the 1890s and we want to keep some of the original features but also because of financial considerations and because we need to live there during this work. If we put a bathroom in the second floor addition it would significantly reduce the space for the third bedroom and would also be back to back with the existing bathroom which seems strange to me. (Unless we moved the existing bathroom which again, would just increase costs significantly.) This will be a good quality addition rather than a boxy closed in porch with ugly siding (as is common in our neighborhood), but I don't think we will be able to increase the budget and disruption necessary to put another bathroom anywhere else. Unfortunately we can't build on more than 60 percent of our lot, so we don't have the space to increase the size of the proposed addition. |
Anonymous
| I'd stick with the half-bath. But I'm not sharing a shower with you. |
Anonymous
| You won't recoup the costs of that shower or bath on the first floor. So unless YOU are going to use it, then it's not worth it. Just do a half bath. |
Anonymous
| Depending on how much more it would cost I don't think an aditional full bath can every hurt you. |