Synopsis: By moving a few nonbearing walls and relocating two bedroom closets, John Boatman was able to add a master bathroom to the second floor of his Washington D.C. town house. He created a spa-like feel in a small area by raising the ceiling height, installing a skylight, and maximizing fixture spaces. In order to have a clean, uninterrupted backsplash, he installed GFCI outlets and light switches in a false vanity drawer.

Over the past few years, John Boatman has been hard at work teasing out the charm in his 1911 Washington D.C. town house. Foremost on his priority punch list was to remedy a dysfunctional second-floor layout and to add a master bathroom where no bath had existed.

Looking at the floor plan, John took stock of his storage needs and the potential that lay in the existing closet spaces. By moving a few nonbearing walls and relocating two bedroom closets, he not only created enough space for a cozy, spalike master bathroom but also made the second floor a much more functional, pleasing place to be.

It took more head-scratching to figure out how the existing floor plan was intended to work than it did to envision a newly designed space. A pass-through between the master bedroom and the middle bedroom was awkward and redundant given the main hallway, and it could easily be jettisoned from the new layout. Similarly, John realized he didn’t need the existing master-bedroom closet because he could move storage to custom built-in closets along the north wall of the bedroom. The bath walls were thickened to accommodate utilities and storage niches.