Jack and Jill bathrooms

[UniformMike]

Our current house has one and I hate it! Does anyone else have one? Have you got used to it?

It's between DD's room and the spare room. I think it will be awkward when we have guests to stay. I don't know why it wasn't made as a family bathroom with one normal door on the corridor - from the way it's set up it should have been possible! The house is old though...maybe this set up was more common in the 70s.

Why will it be awkward?

I don't understand them. What do you do? Lock both doors before you sit on the toilet? Then what? What happens if you then just open your door and leave.
What happens if you forget to lock the, second door do people just pop in and out while you are sat there.

Nooo dont get it. Have an ensuite or have a family bathroom, how can 2 bedrooms share an ensuite.

I stayed in a rooming house, about 50 years ago, that had a bathroom with doors to two bedrooms. The "lock" was a sort of wire/rod thingy that went across the bathroom from one door to the other, so the two doors were both locked, or both unlocked, at the same time.

These days, I'm sure you could have electronic locks that do the same thing.

@missnevermind

I don't understand them. What do you do? Lock both doors before you sit on the toilet? Then what? What happens if you then just open your door and leave. What happens if you forget to lock the, second door do people just pop in and out while you are sat there.

Nooo dont get it. Have an ensuite or have a family bathroom, how can 2 bedrooms share an ensuite.

Exactly! I don't understand why anyone would think this is a good idea!

I was wrong about it being easy to remedy though as it doesn't have a wall next to the corridor. Basically they've done a really badly thought out (imo) extension. So what was the family bathroom became a tiny walk in closet in the master bedroom and what was the ensuite in the old master bedroom had another door put in and became the jack and Jill bathroom.

I drew a diagram 😂 I think the most obvious thing to do would be turn the closet into an ensuite for bedroom 2 and get rid of the second door on the jack and Jill so it becomes the ensuite for bedroom 1 (as I believe it used to be). Not sure how difficult/costly that would be to do though especially as I'm not sure how long we'll be here...

Oops only meant to add the one picture..

@CanadianJohn

I stayed in a rooming house, about 50 years ago, that had a bathroom with doors to two bedrooms. The "lock" was a sort of wire/rod thingy that went across the bathroom from one door to the other, so the two doors were both locked, or both unlocked, at the same time.

These days, I'm sure you could have electronic locks that do the same thing.

Oh that's a good idea, I'll look into it! It just has bolts at the moment.

If you turned the closet into an en suite for bedroom 2 it wouldn't have a window, so I assume you'd need some kind of ventilation thing.

@CiaoForNiao

If you turned the closet into an en suite for bedroom 2 it wouldn't have a window, so I assume you'd need some kind of ventilation thing.

I knew there was a reason I'd discounted that as an option previously and you've reminded me that was it 🤦🏼‍♀️

There is actually still an extractor fan in there which comes on when you turn the lights on. I think in the old layout of the house it would have had a window so not sure if just that fan would be enough (my diagram is not to scale!).

I don’t like them either. I once had a bathroom that had 2 doors, the 2nd leading to a utility room and that also pissed me off. It wasn’t even the main bathroom, but, just no!

However, looking at your plan, I’d just leave it be. Especially if you are planning to move. The whole point of 2 door bathrooms is to maximise space and there’s no easy fix here. Adding a 3rd en suite would be an expensive hassle, particularly if it would rarely be used.

Think about your actual use of the house. Do you often have guests? Is it really going to be problematic, or is it more a question of taste? Can you easily afford to convert the closet and block up the extra door and would you miss the storage space?

Another option would be moving the door to the master back a bit and putting a door from the closet to the hall, making that a hall bathroom. You could even combine it with the current master en suite, making a large family bathroom. It looks like the rooms at either end of the house could serve as a master.

That's another problem - I don't really know how often we'd have guests staying. We live in a tourist destination not in the UK so of course all travel has been really curtailed by the pandemic. We'd only just moved in when the pandemic hit but had quite a few guests staying in that time - it's something I'd like to be able to do tbh. It probably is more a question of taste though. DD is only 1 so it's not like she's going to be going in and out of the bathroom herself for a while (I have no idea when they start to do this haha).

Also the moving, we've talked about leaving this country and coming home to the UK so many times but its never the right time with work etc so I'm kind of minded to just say fuck it and get the house how I want it to be. Cause I worry we'll end up staying here 10 years! DH is having the same dilemma with his pet project of solar panels...

Oof that's a tricky floor plan OP.

I think it's best to leave it until you decide if you're staying long term, in which case you could do a bigger overhaul of that floor.

Depending on the age of your child, I'd probably lock their bathroom door and have them use my ensuite if we had short term guests. Or, again depending on the child and the time your guest is staying, use the spare room and share the bathroom with the child while putting the guest in the master.

My kids have a Jack and Jill bathroom but it’s kind of split into two rooms - so you open a bedroom door into the first bit, which has two sinks and a big mirror, then another door into the second bit which has the toilet and a walk in shower. So child A can come in and brush his teeth whilst child B is on the toilet and there’s still a locked door between them. Is something like that possible?

That said, I hate ours as well. It feels really poorly thought out as it’s quite small and there’s no window, so no natural light, in the bit with the sinks. Both my kids are still young (5 and under) so in reality, they still prefer a bath at night (which is in the master en suite) and come through and wake us up to use our bathroom if they need a wee in the night!

Could you knock through the other ensuite into the closet and put a door to it at the bottom leading off the hall to make a family bathroom.

We could knock through the closet and have a utility/storage area leading to the bathroom which might be quite handy actually (the diagram doesn't convey it because I'm crap at proportions but the whole master bedroom area is disproportionately large).

I do love our master bedroom set up though haha so I'd be sad to lose it.

The jack and Jill is too small to do much with. I was wondering whether we could make it into two tiny bathrooms but the window problem comes up as I think it's have to be split horizontally as otherwise the rooms would be too narrow. Unless we could do some kind of L shaped split...

www.nationalventilation.co.uk/bathroom-and-kitchen-fans/monsoon-energysaver-intellisense/

Regarding the ventilation, we’ve just had one of these fitted to an outside wall in a no-window bathroom. It’s like having a window always slightly open and revs up (silently) when the room is used.

So far we’ve been pleased at how quickly it clears moisture from the room after showering. We’ve left the original fan (attached to spotlight and exiting via loft space) in situ too.

PIL have a J&J bathroom and I hate it! It has a door into a bedroom and a door onto the landing so I don’t understand why they kept it when they did all their renovation work. As a result of keeping the two doors, their shower is tiny when they could have fitted a much better sized one and lost a door.

Their house is huge and has plenty of bathrooms but we always end up staying in the room with the J&J bathroom and I inevitably end up going to the toilet in the early hours with the landing door not even shut because I forget.