We can’t help until you add dimensions to the drawing and indicate what can move. I assume toilet can’t move?

updated the post!

No. Everything needs dimensions. It’s 7’x9’ now or after? The tub is 7’? What about the jog? What about the angled wall?

What's the point of moving the wall? How are you going to utilize that space since the hallway seems to go somewhere?

The bathroom doesn't look terrible as is, to my eye. If you're in NYC and looking for a "low-cost renovation" with all new fixtures and tiles, you may be disappointed, unless you are a contractor or have a family member or friend who is going to work for very little. Perhaps Kendrah can weigh in--she's done a lot of work in NYC.

Read this NYC small bathroom before and after post. https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2982807/nyc-small-bathroom-renovation-before-after

10 years ago this cost $20k. It will easily cost at least double that now to gut your bathroom, or more Plus, note that she spent infinate amounts of time acting as her own designer and architect. Oldly enough, she said it took 8 days. That just sounds like freak luck to me and pre-COVID times work schedules.

This is a good basic primer on phases of a bathroom renovation in NYC.

https://www.blockrenovation.com/guides/new-york-bathroom-remodel

If you don't have the time, money, or need to gut (rotting and degraded pipes in my case), there are some other things you can do to get a nice looking bathroom for less money.

New toilet.

New sink with some storage below and tiny countetop space.

Keep your floor.

Get your wall tiles and tubs reglazed. (It is caustic as hell and your building may have rules about it.)

New lighting.

Recessed medicine cabinet.

Recessed storage in the wall behind your door.

Make the most of smart TP holder location, towel hooks.

New glass doors for tub or new ceiling hung curtain.

Reglazing pics and article from Architectural Digest.

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/reglazing-tile-transformative-fix-for-a-dated-bathroom

Personally I don't think I would touch anything in that bathroom except for wall color or maybe a wall covering.

It looks clean, functional and in decent vintage shape.

Of course my opinion is formed by a few things:

Some of the worst tile work/ workmanship I have ever seen has been in recent Manhattan bathrooms/renovations unless the homeowner had a huge budget. And

2) I am familiar with Manhattan back when people had the tub in the kitchen and the toilet was in a closet that was originally accessed from the hallway outside the apartment and the bathroom you have would save been aspirational.

I am just not sure how reasonable it would be to expect that a new bathroom would be superior to what you've got other than looking updated.

Honestly it’s a nice looking bathroom. Touch it and Pandora’s box may open up where money just goes into the air. Fix any leaks, replace sink with a floating vanity sink area, if you don’t need storage. Replace mirror, lighting, toilet, add glass doors to the bathroom shower area, fab wall paper. Make it a jewel box, that you love walking into everyday.

Fix any leaks

Sometimes in old buildings fixing the leak requires you to open up an enture wall to access and replace old pipes. And then you are into a full gut. This is why we ended up gutting our bathroom.

What you have is far better than any 100K+ plead with the condo board for approval awful "modern' thing that you could come up with. That workmanship cannot even be duplicated for 100K. Plus, you likely will not be given approval to do the 100k+ addons and changes that you want to do.

OP doesn't understand what they have and some others don’t understand it either. The materials and workmanship in this bathroom are high end and impeccable. And much better style than anything ”updated” that they will come up with. The color scheme is not necessarily my thing but I would absolutely leave all of it and work with it. I’d hang nice art over the toilet (not a canvas painting in a humid bathroom) but something nice. I‘d bring in some nice towels, and shower curtain. That’s it. The bathroom is well laid out with everything needed in there. Really... if it’s not broke, I wouldn’t fix it.

And taking out the wall to the hall would, in short, be ridiculous. I would hope the coop board thinks the same.

If you can’t move the toilet, sink or tub, there is no point in expanding into hallway. If you still want to close off a door, you could put a built-in there for a dresser, vanity, storage, etc. Another vote for leaving the bathroom mostly as-is as it looks quite nice and high quality vintage. would be tempted to just get a new vanity with some storage.

That is a FABULOUS bathroom! Just find some cool wallpaper and that’s it.

The bathroom looks fine, you can just do a few tweaks... I would paint the room white, replace the sink, medicine cabinet, sconce, and faucet, install a white waffle weave shower curtain if you don't already have shower doors, not sure looking at your picture.

Ask your super where the pipes run in the walls of your bathroom. I’d do what lisedv is suggesting as far as style though try to fit in recessed shelves between the studs in this room wherever there are no pipes or electric in the walls. Recessed medicine cabinet too.

Show a pic of behind the door - you might be able to get a nearly floor to ceiling medicine cabinet in there. A ton of people in my building have this. Or at least recessed shelves above the tile.

Look hard for a sink that has a flat surface area of a few inches around the sink bowl. Invaluable ”counter” space.

Find out what is in the ceiling over hang above the sink. Can you recess any lighting in there?

Getting rid of the light above the sink will allow for a taller mirror. See if you can recess a medicine cabinet there too. Add side light instead.

Even though I would keep the walls up, I’d find a way to maximize storage for your bathroom in the tiny hallway.

Can you recess shelves in the wall of the little hallway there? My bathroom and primary has the same little vestibule you have. But ours has a closet in it. The closet has a shallow door organizer and we keep nearly all of our bathroom stuff in it. In that way the vestibule really feels like an extension of our bathroom.

It's really not a great idea to store a lot of things in the bathroom because of the dampness, and in my somewhat limited experiences the somewhat passive bathroom ventilation in Manhattan bathrooms, a small vent opening to a common duct system that pulls air by one of those spinning turbine things on the roof, is not very effective in drawing out moisture short term, like from the shower--it's just really there for air exchange.

When staying with friends in Manhattan, I noted that there was basically steam running down the mirror and the metal door in the bathroom and everything stayed damp. All the meds like aspirin and antacid tabs in their guest medicine cabinet were deteriorated.

Most things except soaps and shampoos and such, things like medicines are supposed to be stored in a cool dry place which is the opposite of a warm wet bathroom.

In our most used bathroom, which has a fan, we do not have Any storage except a small shelf for shampoo, toothpaste, tooth brushes and razors, and we keep one small towel at the sink. Everything else has a storage spot immediately outside the bathroom. We even have a spot to hang damp towels Outside the bathroom.

If I recessed a medicine cabinet anywhere (you can get ones that have no mirror) I would recess storage in the hallway immediately outside the bathroom and in the near side of the closet in the adjacent room. I kinda think that this bathroom had the right idea to not have too much storage space inside it, since it is not well ventilated.

Thankfully this OP's bathroom appears to have a window. Great for letting moisture and dampness out of a NYC small bathroom. Light years more advantageous than those passive vents.

I have a passive vent in one of my bathrooms and wouldn't store any medications in there.

One of my friends has an apartment on East 53rd street, a very nice neighborhood and a beautiful apartment. BUT you evidently can't have an outside vent in a bathroom? so she's taking a shower and is overcome by the steam and passes out and falls. Breaks a couple of ribs. NYC is ridiculous and it's getting worse by the minute.

So sorry to hear about your friend! How terrible.

Not having an outside vent is nothing new in NYC. I presume she has an old building and it just doesn't make sense to start drilling holes in exterior walls to accomodate new ventilation. If you are lucky enough to have a window you crack it. If not, you shower with the door open.

Yes, it's an old building and they're not allowed to have an exterior vent, it has nothing to do with making any sense.

Showering with the window open in the dead of winter or the heat and humidity of summer may not be an option. I guess leaving the door open in a multi-million dollar apartment is the best NYC can offer.

It looks like the tile was set in a mortar mud bed. That's a very sturdy installation that can't be duplicated today with a low budget. Give the low budget constraints, I suggest leaving this bathroom alone and concentrating on other changes to the apartment.

Unless you are ready to spend as much as the place cost, reign in any ideas about gutting the whole apartment because you don’t vibe with it’s fabulous vintage charm. The red tape is prohibitive in cost and frustration both. Labor costs are much higher for a multi family building with limited working hours. The building will have specific licensing and insurance requirements for your contractor. A careless contractor can damage a lot of adjacent units. No one wants sewage raining down into their bathroom from above!

Lean into retro cute, and learn to love it. The color can go with anything. Lavender and gray would be great! A bit of paint, a patterened shower curtain, and great towels can go a long way.

I think we scared off the OP; hasn't been heard from since the original post 2 days ago.

Agreed, we scared off the OP. Too bad. It could have been a fun thread. They will probably find a cheap contractor that someone else in their building used and get a crappy job out of it.

Yes, it's an old building and they're not allowed to have an exterior vent, it has nothing to do with making any sense.

It isn't sensible so the board doesn't allow it. I agree that it shouldn't be allowed. I don't want random contractors puncturing the evelope of the brick exterior wall in the units above me. It is too much of a waterproofing liability, and how do you do the exterior work from that high up? The remedy is to purchase a unit in a new condo building that was built with exterior exhaust. Bonus: It probably has a garbage disposal in the kitchen too!

I don't find the weather to be much of an issue. Buildings with passive bathroom ventilation are also buildings with steam radiator heat, which tends to be much too hot in the winter anyway. Cracking a bathroom window in the winter never makes me cold. In the summer it lets in a nice breeze. I'm grateful for my bathroom window and wish I had one in all of our bathrooms!

Unless you are ready to spend as much as the place cost, reign in any ideas about gutting the whole apartment because you don’t vibe with it’s fabulous vintage charm.

This is just not accruate.

1. They are talking about gutting a kitchen and bath. I haven't seen mention of gutting the entire apartment.

2. There is nothing charming about that kitchen. And it is possible that plumbing conditions necessitate gutting the bathroom.

3. You do not have to spend anywhere near as much as the cost of the apartment. Not every renovation in NYC needs to look like Architectural Digest. Yes, it is expensive for sure. But you could probably do a mid-range job on that kitchen and bathroom for $160k. I'm sure that unit cost a pretty penny more than that!

4. Bathrooms and kitchens have improved greatly in terms of safety and function from the time that vintage era buildings were constructed. There is plenty of room to construct a totally new bathoom and kitchen with a sympathetic vintage vibe that is safer and more functional.

The OP wrote "the whole thing needs to be gutter and remodeled. looking for ideas for a low cost renovation with all new."

They are a new poster and it's labor day weekend. They may be completely unaware of the rapid responses that posts get. It could be that they just haven't checked back in.

Do people really close the bathroom door to shower in their own house or apartment when only their SO is home? I never do, mostly because even with a fan I don't want the steam to build up. We do have showers with shower curtains though not glass shower enclosures.

You could probably do some sort of in-the window fan in the bathroom if you did it properly, I could be wrong in this case, but in my experience most bathroom windows open on little more than an airshaft anyway.

Just for your info, the same OP has started another post for a kitchen renovation - samee NY apartment:

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6507888/tiny-new-york-city-kitchen-remodel-ideas#n=17