Spring cleaning for my bank account

The soot I’ve found inside my walls is a fun reminder of why spring cleaning used to be an important yearly chore. I don’t have too much soot to deal with, though, so I need something else to clear out. Coincidentally, I’ve also decided that my house’s floor plan could use some improvement. I have 3 bedrooms, but 2 of them are crazy small, the bathroom is cramped, and there’s not one decent closet in the house. I’ve bounced a few ideas around, including using one of the bedrooms as a walk in closet and enlarging the bathroom, but it seemed like I’d still be wasting space. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the best way to lay out the house would require moving the bathroom. I would lose one of the tiny bedrooms, and add 3 feet to the other. At 9×12, it would still be pretty small, but that’s better than tiny! And better yet, I’d have lots of big closets everywhere! Except none on the first floor. None. Here are some floor plans I drafted on SketchUp.

If I do this, it will involve these changes:

• Most of the former Bedroom 2 will become the new bathroom. The toilet remains near the waste stack (very important!)
• The bathtub moves about 14 feet toward the front of the house. This will mean cutting and shoring up some floor joists, and it’s probably the biggest expense.
• The wall between the existing bathroom and existing Bedroom 2 moves about 2 feet toward the back of the house, reclaiming part of the existing bathroom for the new one.
• The rest of the old bathroom is split between Bedroom 3 and its closet.
• The landing at the top of the stairs will shrink to the 36 inch minimum required by code in order to make the back bedroom bigger. Keep in mind that the rest of the hallway is and will remain 26 inches wide, but that’s fine because it was legal when it was built.
• The back bedroom is enlarged from 9×9′-8″ to 9×12 1/2 or so.
• The front bedroom’s closet is removed. There is currently some wasted space around the chimney. I show even more wasted space in this area so that I have a wall to put my bed on. The recessed areas on either side will eventually be built-in bookcases.
• The front bedroom’s closet is 8×30. The back bedroom’s is 5×30. I can have a small coat closet, abotu 24×32 carved out of the bathroom next to the bath tub. The existing upstairs hall closet, which is too shallow for clothes, becomes a linen closet.
• The bathroom is larger and has a wide vanity with lots of storage, and a nice long window behind the toilet. Blinds or curtains will obviously be necessary.

So what’s everyone think? This is scary. It’s a huge project, and I certainly have to get it right the first time.