Bathroom Remodel Part 3 - Serious Scope Creep

We're gearing up here to really tear apart our master bathroom, only a brief 11 months after we started this project :) I really, really would like to have the bulk of this finished before spring soccer starts late next month, but we'll see - time's a ticking, and we are experiencing Serious Scope Creep (SSC, you may see this again at some point).

So we've talked to tile people, and then went looking for frameless shower doors at Home Depot. I want frameless because it eliminates caulk and lots of nooks and crannies for gunk and such to build up. While there, we saw a picture of something like this:

Our bathroom has the same layout, only we have a full wall between the tub and shower and the shower is a fiberglass insert or something. We were planning on just ripping out the stall surround that's in there & tiling the 3 walls, but now's the time to consider stuff like this, right? Right. So we're talking about it, and discussing the fact that taking out the wall next to the tub, like what you see above, would require all the plumbing to be moved to the opposite wall, backing up to Matt's closet. Well, I say, if we're going to do all that, we might as well move the washer and dryer up from downstairs and turn your closet into a laundry room. Nice of me to take over his closet, right? :) But in all seriousness, this is something we've discussed before. Our laundry room is about a 6ft square room that opens from the hall (and I used the word 'hall', but it's more like 'narrow aisle') between the kitchen & dining room, and leads to the garage. It's so small and tight it's hard to even get pictures of it:

Above you can see where the kids' coats and shoes are stuffed. It's tight now, and they are only going to get bigger, with bigger coats. So as I said, we've discussed this before, but never went beyond that because it would have involved opening walls, calling plumbers, yadda yadda. But since we're opening the wall anyway, now's the time if we're going to do it. Of course, I got all excited, imagining what I could do with my future 'mud room'....

and dreaming of my new front loading washer and dryer - because the only way this will work is to stack them, as Matt's closet really isn't all that big. Oh, and have I mentioned that we'll have to replace the closet door (below) with one that's 3 inches wider just to get a washer/dryer into the room?

I'm convinced it will be all worth it though - my tiny kitchen will benefit because we will be able to put shelves up in the mud room & get all those big things that I rarely use & currently have stuffed in cabinets out of there, freeing up kitchen space (something we desperately need, but that's a story for another day) and my dining room will benefit by not being my main laundry folding station two to three days out of the week.

The plumber threw me for a loop last week, asking for specs on the W/D we hadn't picked out yet, and they want the shower fixtures in hand for the rough-in. As plumbing is up first (we're doing the demo), I have tasked Matt with figuring that all out while I try to figure out tile. I'm neck deep in magazines...

..and have probably 50 tabs open on the internet with various pictures of tile. I'm liking this for the floor...

...and we're doing white subway tile on the walls. We've almost settled on a vanity, and of course need to rework my closet to fit Matt's clothes in -my shoes are being evicted to make space for his clothes ;0

So that's where we're at! I'm waking up in the morning from dreams about tile, wood colors and kitchens, and I look forward to sharing some progress here soon. Hopefully. As someone said to me last week, remodeling is like a disease - it keeps spreading and cropping up in other places :)