You know the kind of mind I’m talking about. The kind where you stop in the middle of a sentence, look at your partner, and go, “Do you see what I see?” Kind of scary because you already know – before you say it out loud – that it’s going to be amazing AND it’s going to be a lot.
This is where we are now with the girls’ bathroom. Buckle up.
Problem: Scrunched Jack & Jill
Currently, Polly and Faye share Jack & Jill’s bathroom. Pocket doors to each room, double sink, soffit over mirror, and window on far wall. it should fill the room with natural light. But because of the way the room is divided, the light feels blocked and the whole space feels half of its actual size. I kept looking at it thinking, “We have to open this.”
There is a storage cabinet in there that is so shallow it can’t even hold a full basket. (Really. I tried.) There’s a bathroom door from the hallway, over two pocket doors, meaning this already small bathroom is basically all doors and no space. And the soffit over the mirror? Goodbye. That has passed no matter what we end up doing.
So that was the original plan: open the soffit, rearrange the storage, simplify things, give a traditional update with a modern twist. A solid improvement for Jack & Jill.
Then I went out to the living room, and looked outside, again he had an idea.
A Great Scary Idea
What if THIS space was a bathroom?
But the more we looked at it, the more it made sense. We can skip the space from corner to corner, frame the wall, add a floor over the entryway, and turn that space into Faye’s new bathroom – directly connected to her bedroom. Which means that existing Jack & Jill stops being Jack & Jill at all. Become Polly’s bathroom. Just his.
Two girls. Two bathrooms. Both have more breathing room than they do now.
It can be a lot. It could be A LOT. We’d lose the natural light from that big window, but we could make up for it with a new front door (which we’ve been considering for a while). Jack & Jill’s bathroom is small and tight, but beautiful. There is something to that.
I stayed with it for a minute. Chris sat with it for a minute. We both knew it was a big swing. But we’ve done it before, and it might be the solution we’ve been looking for for a long time.
What It Means in Both Rooms
This is the part that interests me the most. If Faye’s new bathroom takes up that living space, we can rearrange the layout of Polly’s room in a way that I don’t think we could have pulled off otherwise. From the new arrivals point, Polly’s new door will be the same as Faye’s door, which is great – twin proportions without the shared bathroom. Go into Polly’s room, and the side of the room to your right; to your left is the door to his closet and bathroom (the old Jack & Jill, reborn). Covering the wall where her current door is gives her a new wall to work with – which, depending on how she feels about it, could mean keeping her bed where it is or eventually moving it. Either way, more wall = more options.
And here’s the part that ties it all together: covering the entryway gives Faye the floor space we need to build her a real entryway closet. The armoire was a great solution for many years, but she’s getting older, and her clothes are starting to overwhelm the space. That alone almost sold me on the whole show.
Tradeoffs I’m still chewing over
Jack-and-Jill bathroom it does enjoy its beauty. And we will lose Juliet’s balcony that juts out of the living room. It has been a fixture at many of our parties where our kids throw a game.
The actual statistics, on the other hand? Legally, this option i it’s very easy again much less expensive there is a breeze in front of the house. We are not removing the front door. Let’s chase the natural light next to the brand new wall. We work within the bones we already have, and give each of our girls something better than what they share now.
Chris’s main concern: plumbing noises coming into the entryway. Which is fair! Placing a bathroom directly over your front door is the kind of thing you only want to do once, so it’s best to get the right soundproofing. I’m sure there is a way around it. (Said with the confidence of someone who has yet to call the producer.)
Before Someone Asks: Why Not Give Greta a Bathroom?
I’ve had a few people bring this up in direct messages on Instagram. Greta will be out of the house in a few years. Why don’t you just take one of the girls to her bathroom when she’s gone? Good question. It can be a simple answer.
Shop Greta’s Bathroom
But I’m always designing a forever home. When the girls are older and visiting with their own families, I want each of them to have a meaningful space theirs – not anger, not a temporary solution. I’m not saying they couldn’t share a long time. I lived in a bathroom with my sister my whole life, and it was perfectly fine. I have nothing but good memories. But if we have the room (and opportunity) to give them something more permanent than that, why not do it?
It’s a lens I keep coming back to. Not “the least we can do,” but “what version of this house will we still like in twenty years.”
So that’s where we are
What started out as a small Jack & Jill bathroom makeover is, in some ways, a two-bathroom-and-a-walk-in-closet-and-a-bedroom-reconfiguration project. The old one.
I’ll be sharing moodboards as we firm them up – Polly’s bathroom will be able to keep that natural light it’s been looting for, and Faye’s bathroom is a brand new canvas, which means I’m deep into wallpaper pins that I have no business looking at ahead of time.
We just know it’s going to be great.
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