You understand the type of thought I’m speaking about. The sort the place you cease mid-sentence, take a look at your companion, and go, “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” The sort that’s a bit of scary since you already know — earlier than you’ve even stated it out loud — that it’s going to be superb AND it’s going to be lots.
That’s the place we’re proper now with the ladies’ rest room. Buckle up.
The Downside: The Scrunched Jack & Jill
Proper now, Polly and Faye share a Jack & Jill rest room. Pocket doorways from every of their rooms, a double sink, a soffit over the mirror, and a window on the far wall that ought to be filling the room with pure gentle. However due to the best way the room is partitioned, the sunshine feels blocked and the entire area feels half its precise dimension. I stored it considering, “We’ve got to open this up.”

There’s a storage cupboard in there that’s so shallow it may’t even maintain a full basket. (Really. I attempted.) There’s a door to the toilet from the hallway, on high of the 2 pocket doorways, which implies this already-small rest room is mainly all doorways and no room. And the soffit over the mirror? Bye. That’s gone it doesn’t matter what we find yourself doing.
In order that was the unique plan: open up the soffit, rework the storage, lighten issues up, give it a moody trendy conventional refresh. A stable little Jack & Jill makeover.
After which I walked out to the touchdown, appeared out over the entry, and had the concept.
The Scary Large Thought
What if THIS area turned a rest room?

However the extra we checked out it, the extra it made sense. We may sq. off the area from nook to nook, body in a wall, add flooring over the entry, and switch that space right into a model new rest room for Faye — related on to her room. Which implies the prevailing Jack & Jill stops being a Jack & Jill in any respect. It turns into Polly’s rest room. Simply hers.
Two ladies. Two loos. Each with far more respiration room than they’ve now.
It will be lots. It will be a LOT. We’d lose the pure gentle from that large window, however we may make up a few of it in a brand new entrance door (which we’ve been contemplating for a short time). The Jack & Jill rest room is small and tight, but it surely has attraction. There’s one thing to that.
I sat with it for a minute. Chris sat with it for a minute. We each knew it was a giant swing. However we’ve finished it earlier than, and it could simply be the answer we’re searching for long-term.
What It Means for Each Rooms
That is the half I’m getting actually enthusiastic about. If Faye’s new rest room takes that touchdown area, we will rework Polly’s room format in a method I don’t assume we may’ve pulled off in any other case. From the brand new touchdown area, Polly’s new door would mirror Faye’s door, which is so good — twin sister symmetry with out the precise shared rest room. Stroll into Polly’s room, and the bed room facet is to your proper; to your left is the doorway into her closet and toilet space (the outdated Jack & Jill, reborn). Closing up the wall the place her present door is offers her a complete new wall to work with — which, relying on how she feels about it, may imply protecting her mattress the place it’s or lastly transferring it. Both method, extra wall = extra choices.

And right here’s the half that ties all of it collectively: closing the entry offers Faye the ground area we have to construct her an actual walk-in closet. The armoire was an exquisite answer for a few years, however she’s getting older, and her garments are beginning to overflow the area. That alone virtually sells me on the entire plan.
The Tradeoffs I’m Nonetheless Chewing On
The Jack-and-Jill rest room does have its attraction. We might additionally lose the Juliet balcony that juts out over the lounge, which has been a participant in lots of our events when our children throw a efficiency. That shall be the place Polly’s rest room is, so we wouldn’t need it to miss the lounge.

The actual math, then again? Logistically, this feature is lots simpler and lots cheaper than blowing out the entrance of the home. We’re not transferring the entrance door. We’re not chasing pure gentle round a model new wall. We’re working inside the bones we have already got, and we’re giving every of our ladies one thing higher than what they share now.

Chris’s important concern: plumbing sounds echoing down into the entry. Which — honest! Placing a rest room immediately over your entrance door is the type of factor you solely need to do as soon as, so that you’d higher get the sound-dampening proper. I’m certain there’s a method round it. (Mentioned with the boldness of somebody who has not but known as the plumber.)
Earlier than Somebody Asks: Why Not Simply Give One Greta’s Toilet?
I’ve already had a number of folks elevate this in direct messages on Instagram. Greta shall be out of the home in a number of years. Why not simply shift one of many ladies into her rest room as soon as she’s gone? It’s a good query. It will be the straightforward reply.

Store Greta’s Toilet
However I at all times design for the perpetually house. When the ladies are grown and visiting with their very own households, I need every of them to have an area that appears like theirs — not a hand-me-down, not a brief remedy. I’m not saying they couldn’t share long-term. I shared a rest room with my sisters my complete life, and it was fully nice. I’ve nothing however good reminiscences. But when we’ve the room (and the prospect) to present them one thing extra everlasting than that, why wouldn’t we?

That’s the lens I hold coming again to. Not “what’s the least we will do,” however “what’s the model of this home we’ll nonetheless love in twenty years.”
In order that’s the place we’re
What began as a small Jack & Jill rest room makeover is, by some means, a two-bathroom-and-a-walk-in-closet-and-a-bedroom-reconfiguration mission. Traditional.
I’ll be sharing the moodboards as we agency them up — Polly’s rest room will get to maintain that pure gentle it was being robbed of, and Faye’s new rest room is a completely contemporary canvas, which implies I’m already deep into wallpaper pins that I’ve no enterprise this early.
We simply understand it’s going to be good.
Supply: Mad About The Home
