I've been a contractor for 26 years and done a lot of bathrooms.
1. The first thine I would do is to extablish a budget, as how much you want to spend.
2. The next thing is to make alist of whats important to you with a bathroom, such as larger vainty or type of bath tub.
3. Then find out if you have room for the items that you want to install. This is both square footage and electrical service. You can go to Home Depot etc. and look and measure some of their items.
4. What type of finishes are you expecting? Tile can cost $1/sqft and up. (My last client went to China and bought tiles for her "special" bath. This went with the $15,000 tub and the $1300 sinks and $800 shower head. She ended up spending $145,000 for the bath) Not that this is normal but she got carried away once the project was underway. She only planed to spend $45,000 originally.
5. There are a lot of good guides on bath design that can be accessed. A good design will have basic dim. requirements for different fixtures, such as a toilet should be 18" from the center line to wall and have a minimum of 22" in front. If a handicap person will use the toilet then the handle should be located away from the wall. It might sound funny BUT toilet manufacturers have a test with solid matter such as putting sausages and ping pong balls in and seeing if it will flush. Go to TOTO toilet fixtureweb site for a full explantion of this (Americam Standard also has this) Although this sounds funny I have alot of clients that do a lot entertianing and can not be bothered with a pluged up toilet! So they demand the best.
6. Shower valves should be equiped with anti scald valves.
7. I like levers in lieu of knobs on all valves.
8. Floor: tile needs to be stiff. The tile manufacturers require L/600 for floor stiffness. This is hard if you have an old house with wood framing. If you insist then get small tiles (4 1/4) and install with a latex modified grout. Also floor tile is not wall tile, floor tile should have a rough texture!
9. Lighting: Have the light switch also turn on a vent fan. Task lighting above vainty should be such that it will reflect the type of lighting you will be seen in (color spectrem)
10. If you have an old person living in the house and they will be using the bath then by all means have the door open out from the bath, so that if they should pass out they will not block the door.
I hope I have not bored you to much as I could go on, but after all these years............................yikes
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