Before & After: Simple Solutions for a Seriously Small (& Sort Of Scary) Bathroom

This ‘before’ bathroom might be the ugliest befores I’ve ever seen — and it’s certainly one of the strangest. Years ago, the person responsible for retrofitting a bathroom into this one-bedroom apartment in a former tenement building made a very unusual choice: in order to fit a bathtub into a very narrow space, they shoehorned it in lengthwise, so that you had to climb in from the short end. It was awkward, to say the least.

The other side of the bathroom, covered in ugly faux-wood paneling and peeling linoleum tiles, was hardly less dire. Upon purchasing the apartment, homeowner Henry knew that the apartment needed a makeover before he could even more in, so he set about gutting the place.

Post-renovation, Henry has lost the bathtub but gained a whole, whole lot of space. A frameless glass shower door preserves the spacious feel, and a rippled grey tile on the back wall of the shower provides a focal point for the small room.

A floating, wall-mounted vanity with a slim profile adds plenty of storage without breaking up the space, and a medicine cabinet above provides an additional spot for stashing toiletries.

Henry’s totally transformed bathroom is still tiny, of course — but with the right fixtures it’s just as functional as rooms twice its size.

Henry found his contractor, Louie, through Sweeten, an online resource that connects New York-area homeowners with designers, architects, and contractors. Read more about the project and see more photos on the Sweeten blog.

Re-edited from a post originally published 2.1.16-NT