I like the layout you have now, but have questions and comments:

- How wide is your master walk-in closet? It appears to be wider than necessary. You need 24" for clothing to hang on each side, and around 36" is nice and comfortable for a walking aisle (lots of closets have less). I'm thinking you might be able to steal some space from the closet's width and have a nice built-in bookcase at the top of the stairs.

- I think you have entirely too many doors opening in the same spot: 2 bedroom doors, a laundry door, a closet and a bathroom. To compound the problem, you don't have laundry room space to hold baskets waiting to go into the laundry, so you're going to end up with piles of dirty clothes in this very spot!

One option is to stack the laundry, allowing storage and folding space in the current space, but we hear lots of bad things about stacked laundry.

I'd consider giving up the linen closet. You have ample space in both bathrooms to include a "linen tower" by the sinks. Or you could have a small linen closet in each bathroom by the sink -- I have a tiny 24" closet in my master bath, and it holds an amazing amount: hamper in the bottom, towels in the middle, blankets on the top shelves.

And what if you flipped the bathroom so that the items were on the opposite wall? That would move the door a bit to the left, so that it wouldn't be right on top of the bedroom door.

- I think your master bath toilet area is awfully narrow, and your shower (that's a shower beside the tub, right?) isn't particularly generous. I'd move the toilet across from its present position and give it a full 36" for comfort /ease of cleaning, reduce the over-abundant sink area, and allow the shower to stretch to a more comfortable size.

- I would not compartmentalize the hall bathroom. When you do this, you end up with two tiny rooms, neither of which is comfortable. I'd rather have one nice-sized bathroom.

The closet is pretty wide. How about this: make the closet narrower and longer by removing the linen closet, and shifting it to along the left side of the closet, across from the stairs. To make it more interesting and useful, you could make it cabinetry instead, with drawers, cupboards, and depending on your house style, glass doors with fabric behind.

Could you make the closet just a bid shorter, so the hall corners are exactly opposit each other? You might not miss the couple of inches in the closet, but you'd appreciate them in the laundry. Might have room for an x-narrow elfa unit for a little hamper and a bit of surface.

That laundry room would be way too small for me. It's really not a "room" at all. Just a closet with a little extra depth in front. No place to set a basket of clean or dirty laundry, no place to hang t-shirts to dry, no room for an ironing board, etc. And as designed, you will have to use doors that open outward into the hallway and those doors would need to be standing open whenever you're putting laundry into the washer or moving it to the dryer or pulling thing out of the drying and folding them, etc. The laundry closet doors when open will block anyone from entering or exiting the bedroom next to the laundry.

Without any indication of which side faces the front and where you would want windows, it's impossible to tell if this might even be possible, but...

Have you tried swapping the space where you have the master bath with the space where you have the master closet and laundry closet? I'd rather give up a little bit of floor space from my master bath in order to have a more useful laundry room. And, you could push the doors of the two secondary bedroom in (so that they lose those little alcove entries) which would allow you to expand the new master-bath space slightly.

This is a very rough sketch and I'm not absolutely certain you have enough room but... maybe something like this would work?

Bevangel, that is a good change. Note that it also removes one of my concerns: The tiny spot with too many doors. Now that spot is down to only three doors, none of which will interfere with one another.

I'd consider putting the shower all the way to the back of the bathroom. I think showers just work well in that position -- they can be large, taking advantage of every bit of space, and that angled wall would be fine in a shower. That, of course, would bump the toilet up to the middle of the room or the door. I'd lean towards putting it "first" in the line-up and reversing the door swing so that the toilet would be kind of "behind the door".

Another thing I'd consider: A "laundry chute" from the master to the laundry room. It'd be like having a drop-through door instead of a hamper.

This post was edited by MrsPete on Tue, Sep 23, 14 at 19:06

I can't really read your dimensions. But as others have pointed out, this is more of a laundry closet than laundry room. I had a closet like this in our previous townhouse. It served it's purpose, but I had laundry stored in the master bedroom all the time.

Even if you were to steal some space from the master closet, I still don't think you would have room for an ironing board. Where would you stand to use it?

Nice, Bevangel. Now there's even room for a laundry sink or folding surface and for a laundry basket.

In the master bath, where's the bath towel when stepping out of the shower? Maybe switch the shower and tub. Puts the tub in the center as a centerpiece, nice symmetry between shower and toilet walls, and the showers gets a wall to hang a towel on a hook.

Agree about making the hall bath one room. And if you switch to one sink, there's more room for paraphernalia on top and storage beneath. Or it could have a narrow linen tower.

What about rearranging the hall/doors to something like this? Please excuse the hack job; I have neither the skills nor tools that others like bevangel have.

Oh my goodness, you all are awesome! You have given me so much to think about. I am going to take a good look at all of this with my husband and get back to you.

Thank you so much! I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help!

kate

Nice job, Bev!

I also like what weedyacred did, but it will need a bit of work to fit the bedroom 3 door.

kwv1999
If you need a linen closet, you can add it by the stairs. Looks like your first floor is 9' H, so you have enough headroom to place a linen there, (right above the stair start on the first floor, next to the hall bath), hope you know what I mean.