Just to add. Here is the floor plan of the entire house.

Closet options:

1. Redo master bath with closet space for DH and I in the master bathroom. That is challenging even with getting rid of the tub.

2. Take the 2 closets below the master bedroom and make them a closet for the master bedroom. We would still need closet space in the master bath but only for one person.

The negative of that is that it takes away the closet from the bedroom below the master bedroom. That room is currently my office so I am fine with it. But, for resale, I don't want to remove a closet from a bedroom. So to do this I would have to find a new closet for that room. There are 2 options:

a. That bedroom is 12'7" wide. I could add a 6'6" reach in closet along the right wall (it couldn't be longer as there is a window in the corner. That would make that room 10'3" by 10'3" which would be a small bedroom but maybe OK as it would be the 4th bedroom.

b. Get rid of the door to that room and extend the closet in the bottom bedroom and give half of it to each bedroom. Each room would have about a 6' long reach in closet. I am not inclined to do this as it would me moving the door to the middle bedroom to the formal living room.

3. Third possibility and actually my favorite but it may be too expensive. Take the entire bedroom beneath the master and make it a closet/dressing room for the master. That would allow the entire master bath to be bathroom and I could easily do everything I want to do.

Of course, the negative of this is that it turns a 4 bedroom house into a 3 bedroom which I don't want to do. However, this house has 2 living areas and we don't really need two. The formal living room is the large room in the middle of the house. It would remain as is. However, there is a family room that is "above" the kitchen/breakfast room. We could close it off from the family room and convert about the left 3/4 of the family room into a bedroom. There is a half bath there now (upper left) that could have a shower added to it by stealing storage space from the garage). We would still leave a hall from the living room to the utility room/garage.

My office would move to that room and if we ever sold the house we would have a 4 bedroom house with one living area but with a large master closet and nice master bath. But -- this may be more expensive than I want to do so I want to see if other options would work. Right now, the easiest option is 2.a.

So there are no windows in the bathroom, just the skylight?

I’d separate the closet and bath space. For ex, walk-in closet on the left with a cess from bedroom (it would be, at a minimum, 7 feet wide by the depth of the space, is it 9’8”?). Hopefully that would clear the skylight. Then move toilet to the area occupied by the current closet on the right. Rotate sinks/vanity and make longer. Or flip the two spaces if it makes more sense or offers more opportunities for windows.

No windows. At least that helps somewhat. These are all outside walls except for the that attaches to the master but no window (which is probably why the skylight is there).

Where would you put the shower? I struggle with finding room for a closet (I agree about your placement) and then having enough room for the vanity areas, shower and toilet room.

Yes ^^^ Except I’d put the shower and toilet on the same wall, opposite a longer vanity or vanity/linen cabinet. Or maybe long toilet room along the back wall (top of drawing) to accommodate the litter box.

I figured the litter box would go in behind the door, across from the toilet. But here are a couple more layouts:

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Jennifer K - Thanks for the layouts. Those work pretty well. I like the closet and this might be big enough that I don't need to add a second closet to the master from my office. It looks like the shower and toilet would be big enough. (I have to check on the litter box -- one of my cats is a ragdoll and he requires a huge litter box or he tends to miss it. I need to check dimensions on it).

The only negative that I see is that our vanity is smaller than our current vanity. Current vanity is about 7 feet long and has one bank of drawers between the sinks. Currently I use all 3 drawers and part of the over the toilet storage. DH has nothing except what he can put around his sink. I drew the plan out to have wide enough toilet, the vanity is 6' long so the drawers are even smaller. That may be the compromise we have to make.

In your plans, I especially like the entrance doors. I flipped it to make the closet on the other side. The left side of the bathroom is slightly wider than the master bedroom so that side it not good for the entry. But, flipping would work reasonably well. Or maybe just flipping the shower and the door in the bottom drawing. Not having to have the shower open into the bathroom solves a lot of problems....

I'm wondering about how you and hubby use the vanity. Are you there at the same time? If not, do you really need two sinks? If you had one sink, you'd have room for more storage, or a knee hole. Even when my husbeast and I share our vanity (usually while tooth brushing) having one sink isn't an issue-- and cleaning one sink instead of two is definitely nice!

In the first plan I posted, you have room for a linen closet/cabinet behind the door. The bottom section could be separate and have a pull out base and a hole in the door for kitties. The top section would hold a lot of stuff.

Following for updates, looks like you have a great deal of space to play with layouts.

Jennifer K - Yes, we are often there at one time. In the interim between selling our last house and buying current house, we rented a short term apartment that had one sink. It was totally awful. Having 2 sinks is absolutely something I want. And, FWIW, it is the standard in the area so would be negative not to have it.

I am very intrigued by your layout because I do think you solved a major issue by opening the closet to the bedroom. I was struggling with having to work around a closet door in the bathroom.

What I like about your ideas is that we get one closet out of the master bath space and don't have to add closet space to the bedroom from my office which then leads to having to add a closet to the office. I think that could be done but obviously adds expense and I would lose 2 feet of width in my office. So not having to do that is intriguing. I like that a lot.

On the other hand if I added one closet to the bedroom from my office (see the full house plan to see those closets I could move to open into the bedroom) then the one closet in the bathroom could be smaller as it would only have to serve one person. Then, I have room to have a longer vanity or, ideally, separate vanities for the two of us. So, I like that also. But as I said it does have negatives -- more cost and making my office (the 4th bedroom) 2' narrower. It would become the smallest secondary bedroom while now it is the largest....

Designer Drains - I once had a house where the master and closets was 26 x 17. Now that was a lot of space! This -- not so much. I mean I think it is adequate but a bit more challenging to get everything I want....

Do you need a toilet room? (Sorry if I missed this). Not having one saves lots of space. I’d put shower and toilet on one side (maybe keep shower where it is) and 9’ vanity on the other side. Room for two sinks and knee space. Door in middle and window at end. It’s a shame not to have a window in that section of the house with 3 exterior walls.

This just came to me. Sorry for the crude drawing.

Maybe you can maintain the skylight. Reach in closets are super functional; they don’t waste space that a large closet needs for walking.

Looking at input from everyone DH came up with the below. I like the direction of it but it has some issues.

So the issues:

1. Shower needs to have a seat in it. I want to have a handshower as well as regular shower (DH wants a rain shower head). If we put the seat the length of the far wall then we put the showerheads down new the end where the door is. Problems with that. First, it will be over 6 feet from the shower heads to the seat. That seems like a long distance particularly if I need to sit and want to use the handshower at the same time. Also, we basically couldn't have any glass walls, only the glass door so it would a dark tunnel in there. We could solve the length issue by making the shower shorter -- but it would still be a tunnel. I would probably be happy enough with a shower a foot shorter but the one we have now has that configuration (but only about 4' long) and it feels like a tunnel.

2. Toilet is the minimum size to allow the cat litter pan in there. Cat litter pan is 35" wide. With a 65" toilet room there are about 6" between ones feet if seated on the toilet and the cat litter pan. That is not ideal (would prefer a foot so ideal toilet room is 6' long) but the bigger issue is that in this plan the cat litter pan would partially block the door.

3. DH failed to account for the skylight which is in the middle of the room near the back wall. The skylight would be where the toilet room is and would extend into the main part of the bathroom which is a problem since there is a wall there. I would prefer to not have to do anything to the skylight.

Any ideas on how to solve these issues? I do like how he did separate vanity for each of us.

What if you swapped toilet and shower in the latest plan above? Maybe have to tweak measurements. If shower had the skylight that would be cool. And maybe a window in toilet room.

The problem is the direction of the skylight. DH did a drawing of the room with just the skylight in it.

I met with a designer today about the whole house and she gave me some good ideas. For the bathroom we discussed a number of options. Of all the things we talked about the bathroom was the most challenging one. The kitchen (which I had thought to be more difficult) was much easier to deal with. The option that had the most appeal to me:

1. Turn the hall closet and part of the office closet (secondary bedroom "beneath" the master) to open into the master and be one closet. That would become DH's closet. He doesn't need a lot of space and could manage with a good closet system. This would have the virtue of leaving a small closet in my office so that remains a secondary bedroom with a closet.

2. Alternative to above - Take both closets (hall and in my office) and make a larger closet opening into master for DH. That gives him a good sized closet but leaves my office without a closet. If and when we would ever sell the house if we felt we needed a closet in that room then we could revert to 1. and put a small closet in that room. I like this idea as this is a retirement home for us that we don't plan to sell.

3. In the bathroom, the closet in the upper left corner goes away. That area becomes a large corner shower, extending a bit into where the tub is now.

The vanity extends to the wall where the toilet is now. Possibly put in a small linen cabinet.

The toilet is put into where the shower is now. That is about 38" wide and 4' long. That would be fine for the toilet but doesn't leave room for the litter box.

My closet extends to take up most of the space now occupied by the tub. No, it wouldn't be long enough to have clothes hung on both sides. But I would have one long side that I could double hang clothes. The door would open to the long side. The toilet room could then be extended a bit (for the litter pan). I would lose one side of hanging space in the existing closet. But, right now the closet is very cramped as it really isn't wide enough to support hanging on 2 sides. If the shower encroached a foot into the tub, I would end up having a closet that was about 10' long. If it encroached 2' then I would have 9'. At the end of the closet (the existing closet I would put some shelving.

I think this would solve most of the problems. I would get a long enough vanity and toilet room. The corner shower would be a nice size. My closet would work for me. In my prior house I had about 11' of hanging space and didn't use all of the upper space. I might even get a narrow linen cabinet.

To make this work, the skylight would have to go away. That seems to be the lesser of evils. I could potentially put in a high window in the shower as it would be on outside walls.

I haven't drawn this out (as I am terrible at doing that) but it seemed to make a lot of sense. Of course, it only really works with adding the closet for DH to the master. But that is a relatively easy thing to do.