Eliminate walk In closet for bigger bathroom?

12 years ago

So here's my dilemma:

Right now we have a pretty small master bath (5 x 8 feet) next to a fairly small "walk in closet" (5 x 5 feet). There's not enough room for clothes to comfortably hang from both sides of the walk in, so there's only usable space on 2 of the walls. As far as walk-ins go, it's pretty much the bare minimum.

So what I'm considering is extending the bathroom all the way into the closet, that would bring the bathroom to 5x13 feet, and give me much more room to have a nice sized shower, linen closet, and double vanity (as opposed to how it is now, 3x3 shower, single vanity and no linen closet). To replace the closet I was thinking of a 13 foot built in wardrobe like this:

http://starcraftcustombuilders.com/images/Closet/WardrobeWalll_72dpi_600x350.jpg

That would definitely hold more stuff than the current walk in does, but is a "walk in closet" such a big deal that it will hurt the resale? Personally I feel a closet system like this is a huge upgrade over a tiny 5x5 walk in, but I know opinions differ on that.

What does everyone think?

Featured Answer

Billl

12 years ago

"but is a "walk in closet" such a big deal that it will hurt the resale?"

Yes. Many people will not even look at a house that doesn't list a walk in master closet. Of course, that really depends on your area and price point. If you are in an 80 year old neighborhood where nobody has walk in closets, then it isn't a big deal. If you are in a 10 year old neighborhood and EVERYONE has a walk in closet, then not having one would be a big disadvantage.

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Comments (8)

doug_gb
12 years ago
Lots of people like updated baths with two sinks, decent sized showers, cabinets for personal items.

If you replace the closet with a built in Wardrobe Wall I think it would be great!
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dominatus
Original Author
12 years ago
The house is almost 70 years old, almost all the houses in my town are. Very very little new construction. When we were house shopping this was one of the only houses with a "walk in closet" in our price range, although we have moved the house into a different bracket due to many renovations, the age of home it's competing with is the same (1920s to 1950s)
pam29011
12 years ago
I think reach-in closets are so much more functional than walk-in closets. We have a similar dilemma, in order to renovate & make a walk-in 6' wide (so you can have racks on both sides) the master bath has to be small.

And personally, I'd rather have my OWN 6' wide reach in closet and have DH have his own 6' reach in closet than share a walk-in. But ... I think the market is hooked on being able to say, "Oh yes, and our new house has a walk in closet!" Regardless of how dumb I think it is :)

I'm still on the fence about what we'll do - should we go with a layout that will work better for our lives (and our marriage) or go with the layout that offers the best resale because it has the magic words? So I don't have an answer for you ... I can only commiserate that it's a hard question :)
doug_gb
12 years ago
@pam:"I'm still on the fence about what we'll do - should we go with a layout that will work better for our lives (and our marriage) or go with the layout that offers the best resale "

A couple of thoughts.. Living your life by guessing about someone else's preferences in the future is plain silly.

Resale value? It may be quite a long time before this housing crisis is over.

I don't think it's really a hard question if you have ample closet space in your home. We live in Minnesota, and here you need lots of clothes. My wife and I each have about 4 feet of reach in closet space in the master bedroom. That's really enough for everyday work clothes and casual clothes. We store lesser used clothes in a hall closet, and the out of season clothes in down stairs closets.
jmc01
12 years ago
We live in a neighborhood of 90 year old homes. No one has 5x13 bathrooms. Everyone has 5x6 ft master baths and smaller than that masterclosets.

Houses sell just fine here...buyers expect this type of layout. People looking here want vintage homes. If they wanted ginormous master baths, they'd be looking out in the burbs.

Leave a good thing alone.
davidro1
12 years ago
i don't think you are getting good advice. Post a layout of the whole floor.
blfenton
12 years ago
We were faced with this exact question when we renovated last year. Our closet is 5x6 so we can hang on both sides but our ensuite is the same size as yours. What we were able to do however was to borrow a bit of space from the main bathroom and enlarge the ensuite shower stall.

The plumbing for the ensuite shower stall backs onto the plumbing wall for the bath/shower combo in the main bathroom. We moved the main bathroom bath/shower stall down 16" taking over some room of an underused hall storage space and then enlarged the shower stall. Our GC said that because most people are doing away with bathtubs in ensuites (at least in our area) that a larger shower stall is of more value and it allowed us to keep our "walk-in" closet. We still only have one sink in the bathroom and there is no doubt it is still small. In the room that was left in the hall storage we just put in a bunch of shelves for storage of TP, kleenex, lightbulbs etc.

Our house is a 1972 post and beam and people don't expect grandiose ensuite bathrooms in them so we thought this was a great compromise. Don't know if any of this helps but it might.