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I am new to this, so please let me know if there is already a thread or if more information is necessary.
We are enclosing a 9×13 deck with a southern exposure and using part of it to create a 9×7 bathroom. There are several things we are trying to do to lessen the loss of light. One of them is to have the door to the bathroom be a pocket door with plenty of glass/windows. The other idea is to put some type of glass opening on the interior bathroom wall (the one that the pocket door slides into).
So, my question is how lame of an idea is either one? If you think it’s possible, do you know of a supplier or can you suggest a website where we can see some either cool old doors that can be retrofitted or “new” doors that don’t look like we should have used them for the outside. In terms of the idea of “interior” windows, do you see any issues with doing that?
I have attached a picture of what we would like the door possibly to look like. I say possibly, because the drawing tool used is pretty limited and so is my imagination, at this point.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Cynthia Siegel
[email protected]
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By glass, I assume you mean opaque :-) What height are your ceilings? What style is the house? A transom could work over the door. If the house is old-fashioned (say, pre WWII) a 3-pane awning window right over the door with opaque glass could fit in quite nice. I like the transom better than glass in the door, but maybe my vision is limited. I also like not wasting a southern exposure on a bathroom. I put 'em in the north east corners.
What's the room the door opens onto? That probably makes the most difference. If it's the master bedroom, glass in the door might be OK. If it's your main entertaining room, that's different all together...
*More info would be helpful.Floor plan of enclosed deck area and its relationship to houseLocation of bathroom on this floor planPlanned location of door (and windows) to the bathroom in question and other doors/windows on the plan - house included.Lessen the loss of light to where? The bathroom? The original house? The remaining portion of the floor plan?Just to throw an idea out: you could use glass block for the walls of your bathroom, You could put a tempered slab of glass, frosted for privacy,on tracks, to be either a pocket door or surface mounted. You could offset a section of a wall so it bypasses itself and do away with the need for a door.
*Light options:1. Chest high windows along the exterior wall.2. Skylights3. Your idea of a pocket door with windows in it?I like my first 2 ideas. Your idea of a pocket door is fine, and I guess you could put windowss in such a door. The hardware for pocket doors is fairly universal, e.g., they work on most doors. I know of no reason why you couldn't pick one of the beefier hardware sets and have the door made to your specs.I do this all the time with interior, exterior, and cabinet doors. Custom door and window shops can make a good project look great.Hope this helps.
* Ralph Wicklund 10/17/01 6:59pmThanks for your quick reply, Ralph. To answer your questions without trying to draw a floor plan (the attachment was just an example of 2 door designs)...Once we've enclosed the deck (9 wide x 13 long) it will basically be an extension of the current master bedroom which is 9 x 15. The resulting space, before bath, is then 9 x 28, and the exterior walls are the south and west. Also, don't know if this is helpful, but this is a townhouse condo and on the lower floor (above the current master bedroom is the kitchen and above the deck we want to enclose is a matching upper deck). So, we would then build a 7 x 9 bath on the southern, exterior end of the space, thus the loss of light comes from "blocking off" the southern exposure. We are adding windows to the western wall also to try to compensate for the loss of light--the enclosed space does not lend itself to choosing the northern end of the room.So, we plan to put the door on the western side of the wall that will separate the bathroom and bedroom. The bathroom would have one window on the southern wall and one on the western wall: the bedroom will have 3 windows on the western wall, but 2 of them are narrow (a design consideration because of the homeowner's association).We thought about glass block for the wall but it does not fit the style of the place. I like the idea of a glass slab on tracks--but do you mean that it would still slide in to the wall like a pocket door?If you know of any websites with any door examples--that would be very helpful. Thanks--Cynthia
* Scooter 10/17/01 7:40pmHi Scooter,Thanks for your response--see my reply to Ralph--does this change your ideas? Cynthia
* Bill King 10/17/01 6:42pmHi Bill,Thanks for your quick reply. The townhouse was built in 1973, and the ceilings are 8 feet--if you see my reply to Ralph you'll see more info on dimensions, orientation, and why the northern placement doesn't work. Despite the fact that the house reflects no particular architectural style except for post-modern-no-thought-given-except-to-build-it-cheap-and-fast, a transom wouldn't work. We have tried to make the bedroom Mission-style with the furniture we have. We were thinking that Japanese-style accents for the bathroom might work.As we said to Ralph--any sites that you know that we could look at for visuals would be very helpful.Cynthia
*OK. Scratch the glass block and the heavy glass panel and expand on the Japanese accent you mentioned for the bath.You could start with the entire wall between bath and bedroom built as a floor to ceiling shoji screen with a sliding section for the door. No need to pocket this sliding section, just use a bypass panel.Translucent panels will provide privacy and separation of space and just about all the light transfer you could possible get considering only two windows in the bath (Not including added lighting).You could make those bathroom windows large, also with the shoji screen look and, if possible, one window in the bedroom, closest to the bath, to tie in the look.I'm sure you could easily do an internet search and come up with pictures of shoji screens. There are companies that will make them to order and they are not the traditional flimsy rice paper either. There was a thread in the past where fiberglass panels were mentioned, as well as a source, but I don't have that info.
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I am new to this, so please let me know if there is already a thread or if more information is necessary.
We are enclosing a 9x13 deck with a southern exposure and using part of it to create a 9x7 bathroom. There are several things we are trying to do to lessen the loss of light. One of them is to have the door to the bathroom be a pocket door with plenty of glass/windows. The other idea is to put some type of glass opening on the interior bathroom wall (the one that the pocket door slides into).
So, my question is how lame of an idea is either one? If you think it's possible, do you know of a supplier or can you suggest a website where we can see some either cool old doors that can be retrofitted or "new" doors that don't look like we should have used them for the outside. In terms of the idea of "interior" windows, do you see any issues with doing that?
I have attached a picture of what we would like the door possibly to look like. I say possibly, because the drawing tool used is pretty limited and so is my imagination, at this point.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Cynthia Siegel
[email protected]