Welcome back to the biggest tiny house in Amsterdam. Half baths, 3/4 baths, 1 1/2 baths, I never really got all the bathroom fractions straight, even through all our years of renting various houses with various configurations of bathroom facilities. However, I’m fairly sure that the bits of tile, porcelain, and chrome in our little house add up to somewhere in the vicinity of one whole bathroom.
You already met our tiny little powder room toilet in the Hallway. We are, in fact, lucky there’s a diminutive sink in there; many similar toilets in Amsterdam houses don’t have them.
And that’s it for toilets in our house. Needless to say, we have a no-electronics rule in there. But the rest of the bathroom (bath/shower and a proper sink with hot water), can be accessed, as you may recall, only through the kids’ bedroom. So I guess you have my answer to “Which Bizarre Quirks Would You Put Up With to Live in the City of Your Dreams?” This idiosyncrasy sort of made sense when the house was a one bedroom. With two bedrooms, I admit it is a bit inconvenient to sneak through the sleeping kids’ room to take a shower late at night. But we’ve been parents for twelve years, so we are pretty much pros at sneaking past sleeping children.
When we moved in, furthermore, there was no door between the bathroom and the room. I always thought this was a bad idea, even in our giant master suite in Florida. What do you do, for instance, if you want to shower without waking your sleeping partner? Or fill your bathroom up with steam to help a sick kid breathe at night? Or make a safe, contained sugar-glider playroom? Or let a houseguest take a shower without rendering your entire bedroom unusable? In short, I am heavily in favour of bathroom doors. On our list of renovation priorities, a bathroom door came right after building the wall to create our bedroom.
Originally, the bathroom was pretty minimalist. Nice-looking, I think.
What we’ve done, more or less, is fill up every nook and cranny with the functionality demanded by a family of four living in a small house with one bathroom.
For instance, take a look at those laundry bags hanging on the wall. They’re labelled by colour (darks, reds, light colours, and whites), because I’m not one of those people who sorts laundry after it’s been thrown in a hamper. Our washing machine is in the kitchen, so the bags can be taken down from their wall hooks and easily carried off to be washed once they’re full. You’ll also notice Tony’s clever double towel solution–two in the space of one!
They’re hanging off the bottom of a pair of storage cabinets. Because we’ve fit in an extra storage cabinet wherever we could in this virtually closet-less house.
To the right of the sink there’s just enough space for one of IKEA’s most wonderful creations: the råskog utility cart. If I had the space (and it doesn’t take much!) I truthfully would have a råskog in every room of my house.
We are sort of attached to this shower curtain, since it was on our original Target registry when we got married. I’m, um, pretty sure we’ve changed the liner a few times in the past thirteen years.
It has a cute matching garbage can and soap dispenser, which we also still have. And I distinctly remember as a newlywed discussing whether we should splurge on the darling matching shell hooks. I’m glad we did.
There’s enough space in the corner for a matching piece to the råskog utility cart: this little retro stool. Indispensable for reaching into the high cupboards or sitting in the bathroom and chatting while your partner is in the bath (Tony and I both spend inordinate amounts of time in the bath).
And what is that lovely wooden object to the left? My beautiful spa bath mat, created (during my fertile IKEA hack period) of snap-together patio flooring. It is not only a thing of beauty, but also terribly practical. It is anti-slip, dries quickly, and feels nicer than stepping out on one of those bathroom rugs I never managed to wash often enough.
And of course we had to fill that empty wall at the head of the bathtub with little artefacts in shelves, mostly stone fish and frogs from Indonesia.
And speaking of decorations, I hope you noticed this nifty little Etsy number. To go along with the vaguely nautical theme, it’s a message in a bottle! Or at least a recycled bottle. You can see how thick the glass is from below. And the obliging Spanish artist made the ceiling fitting match our bath mat.
The special long Edison bulb puts out a lovely, warm glow. Which is important because of the amount of time I spend in this room, yes, bathing! Last birthday Tony gifted me this wonderful bath tray and bath pillow, along with some delectable bath bombs. I’m addicted to bath bombs. And baths. And reading books in the bath. I have waterproof covers for my Kindle and my phone. In fact, full disclosure, I am currently typing this with my thumbs, on my phone, in the bath.
that last line…hahah! Love this!