Is it big enough to cut in half and give both a sink, toilet, and shower? Maybe if you posted a floorpan, we'd be able to offer some ideas.

Size is going to be a big factor. I would hire a contractor to look at the project before buying the house. You should be able to find someone for a relatively small fee to walk through with you and give you an idea of feasibility and an estimate on cost. We hired someone to do that for our current place. I think we paid $200 in a high cost of living area to walk through the entire house and give estimates on multiple projects (kitchen, two bathrooms, replacing furnace, replacing roof, etc).

Thank you, I will try to figure out how to post a floor plan tomorrow. It will be a rough sketch -- so far, we are just looking at photos of the house online and have not been there in person. The location, price, and condition look good except for the Jack n Jill. I do not understand the huge popularity of Jack n Jill bathrooms, but many, if not most, family homes we have viewed in our area have this bathroom style.

This is an attempt to post the floor plan for the home. The Jack N Jill is on the second floor on the left hand side. We prefer not to have a doorway into to the hall, just two small ensuite baths. At our former home, the previous owners had added a small shower to the downstairs half bath. Even something like that would work better than a Jack N Jill for us at this time. We like everything else about this house.

I appreciate any help and input you can give me.

I'm no expert but it looks to me like you have got room, especially if you are willing to borrow closet space somewhere. I'm almost wondering if you would be just as well off taking the 8 x 8.5 closet from the master suite, attaching it to the adjacent non-master bedroom and turning it into a bathroom. You could leave the jack and Jill intact then, which would also leave a hall accessible bathroom from the game room. (Those closets amaze me--the KITCHEN in the first house we owned was 8 x 8.)

I'd say grab some graph paper, google the minimum distances between fixtures and see what you can draw--maybe two or three options. (You can print graph paper off the internet if you don't have any handy.) Then pay a GC to go with you to give you an estimate on what it would cost.

Wow this is an oddball of a floorplan. That second-floor bathroom is trying to do triple duty, with three entries from the landing and two of the bedrooms. At first I thought the easiest solution would be placing a tub and toilet where the lower left bedroom closet is now (expanding it slightly down into the bedroom), closing up the extra doors, and relocating the closet. But if you closed off the hallway entry, that would reduce the third bedroom to den or office status since it would have no access to a bathroom without walking through someone's bedroom. So maybe crl's solution is the best one here.

Also, it look like this house has a tiny shower tucked into the oddly-shaped corner in the first floor half bath too, which would make it at least a 3/4 bath - some real estate agents would advertise this as a 3 bathroom rather than a 2.5. It an unusual place for one given there's no bedrooms on the floor, but it could be very useful especially for overnight guests if the 2nd floor is converted to three ensuites.

Those are great ideas.

It seems that some space might be wasted just from all the doors opening into it. I count four doors. We do not need a hall bath upstairs -- visitors can just go downstairs.

I had not considered turning one of the master closets into a bathroom for the adjoining bedroom -- that's brilliant.

We prefer all bedrooms upstairs -- our last home had all bedrooms upstairs and it worked very well for us.

It looks very do-able. There is a lot of room to play with, if you are willing to use some closet space and close off the hallway door. The biggest problem I see is that there is only one window in that area, so either one bath wouldn't have a window, or you'd have to add one on that exterior wall.

Many bathrooms don't have windows. You're required to have an exhaust fan vented to the outdoors if they're no window, though that's desireable anyway since nobody wants to open the window in the winter or on a hot summer day just to ventilate the room.

I just noticed there's actually two entries to the bathroom from the hallway - totally redundant. If you go with the one of the en suites being across from the master bedroom, you could open up alot of room on the other side by ripping out that isolated sink and removing walls in that area, or just putting some kind of closet or room addition there. Or maybe rip out the closet and sink in the lower left bedroom to increase the bedroom size, and use the remainding bathroom for the bedroom's exclusive use, closing off doors and maybe reallocating space to some extent.

There are well-laid-out J&J baths, and then there are travesties like this one that, in their attempt to be all things to all people, waste a ton of space and make no sense.

I'd take the lower left bedroom and convert the sink + closet (including hall in between) to a bathroom. Add a reach-in closet along the left wall.

Then I would close off the door between the upper left bedroom and the bathroom, leaving just the one hall entrance. Make your sink a little longer, or add linen storage, and you've got a well-functioning hall bath.

If it's critical to have this hall bath open only into the bedroom, then you could close off the hall door, rotate the sink 90*, and stretch it out or add storage. But I wouldn't do this, as it would eliminate access by the 3rd bedroom occupant. Even if you don't need it for the person in the 3rd bedroom or game room, it will be hard to sell down the road without that access.

You could also move the upper left bedroom door up a little (make it even with the closet) and then have hall entry as well as very secluded bedroom entry.

This post was edited by weedyacres on Wed, Jan 21, 15 at 13:44

I'm assuming from what the OP said that they don't want or need hall access to a bathroom that one of the bedrooms isn't going to be used as a bedroom.

I also LOL at how home builders are so overspecific in naming the rooms on their floorplans. Like everyone wants a game room in the middle of all the bedrooms and home office, just the thing to ensure a good night's rest or undistracted working at a desk.

One small item I find really irksome in this floorplan: the door to the master bathroom toilet room is ideally positioned to (a) block the entry from the bedroom when open, which it assumedly would be when not in use, and (b) whack the person using the sink when unexpectedly opened from inside.

Also, that door to the upper left bedroom is a weird one. Perhaps to keep it from blocking access to the J&J bathroom when open, it's hinged on what would otherwise be the wrong side. As it is, especially since the bedroom closet extends further than the door opening, the door must be opened an awkward 180 degrees to enter the bedroom from the hallway. Another reason that favors making the upper right and lower left bedrooms the two en suites.

This post was edited by lee676 on Wed, Jan 21, 15 at 15:32

You may be reducing a 4 BR home to a 3 BR home for resale purposes. I'd talk to a couple of local realtors about whether the 3rd BR being served by that J&J can be called a true BR if the only access to a bathroom in in another BR with no common entry. I think a GR with no upstairs bath access would also negatively impact resale. You are probably looking at tens of thousands of dollars spent with the net result being a decrease in value. Doesn't make sense to me.

Instead, look at making one an ensuite and one a modified J&J with entry that can be used by the other BR and GR. Or perhaps just rework the J&J bath layout Move the door into the back BR so it is parallel to the back wall and make that back entry open to the GB and additional BR. See if you could move the toilet into the area with the sink near the stair landing to create what is essentially a half bath (all you need for the GR) and go from there.....

I would be surprised if bathroom access is required to count a room as a bedroom. Hasn't been in the places I have lived. But who knows, worth asking.

I think the resale point is a valid one though, especially if the jack and Jill arrangement is common in the area, it may be a negative for resale to take that out. Especially if it ends up leaving no hall access to a bathroom from the other bedroom and from the "game " room. Even if original poster doesn't care about those things, a future buyer very well might.

That's part of the reason I suggested a whole new bathroom. It seems quite possible to me that converting one of those huge closets into a bathroom would cost about the same as moving all those jack and Jill fixtures and walls around and that adding a bathroom would add value to the home rather than potentially subtracting it.

I would suggest making it a common bathroom.

If you expect to live there more than a few years, I wouldn't fret too much about resale value. You want a home that you like, not some imagined future buyer who may also have specific needs that aren't generic. I would merely try to design something where a hallway bathroom entry could easily be retrofitted if the buyer wants one.

If it was all about maximising resale value, the first thing I'd do is put a wall up dividing the game room from the hallway. Voila, instant 5th bedroom!

It looks like there is room.
Some things to verify:
1) if the house has 1 additional toilet, will it be to code with its current sewer line? In my area, 4 toilets requires a 4" (I think) line, whereas most homes are built with a 3" (I think) line. (the point is, would you need to replace your entire sewer line with the addition of 1 toilet)?

2) Which way do the joists run?
3) Where is the main stack?

We decided not to buy this particular property for a number of reasons. But there are so many 2.5 bath houses with some sort of Jack and Jill on the second floor that we have to wonder about it.

Good catch on the master bathroom door -- it was just as poorly designed as the floor plan would indicate!

Thank you for all of your help. I will consider all of this in the event we see another home that we like except for the 2.5 baths.

I have wondered about the "game room" in the center of a bunch of bedrooms. I always imagined it would be the "Reading Room" or the "Quiet Room" if we named it....

Good choice I think. I personally find 2-story foyers in moderately-sized houses to be ridiculous - that space would be much more useful for an extra 2nd-floor room, or an enlarged bedroom, or an extra bathroom. And the curved staircase wastes further space on the first floor, and forces an oddly curved hallway, a pie-slice shower in the main floor bathroom, and a coat closet that's too far from the front entry door. You have to walk past the bathroom *and* the living room just to hang up your jacket.

As others have noted, some J&J bathrooms are much better designed than this one.

Did this project ever get completed?

Id love pics, cost and floor