The Closet Between Two Bedrooms Is Now the Second Bathroom
Project Overview
Location:
alexandria, va
Project Type:
BATHROOM CONVERSION
Service:
Bathroom Remodeling
Contractor:
Vale Construction
Description:
This project involved converting a closet space into an additional bathroom between two bedrooms, providing more convenience and functionality to the home. The first two images show the original space, with a closet that was repurposed to create a new bathroom. The next set of images highlights the finished transformation, featuring a modern design with sleek fixtures, a walk-in shower, and ample storage space. This conversion not only added value to the home but also significantly improved the overall living experience by maximizing available space.
Two bedrooms, one closet sitting on the wall between them, and one bathroom for the whole floor to share. The homeowners did not want to lose a bedroom and did not want to build onto the house. So the closet went, and a second bathroom took its place.
The space it started as
A reach-in closet with white sliding doors, opening off the bedroom. Painted trim, crown moulding running above it, dark hardwood underfoot — the sort of closet almost every older Alexandria home has one or two of. Useful for coats and boxes, and nothing more than that.
What made it worth converting was not its size. It was its position. Sitting between two bedrooms, that closet was the one spot on the floor where a second bathroom could serve both rooms instead of just one.
Making a bathroom fit a closet footprint
A closet gives you depth measured in feet, not yards. Everything in the finished room had to be chosen to fit a narrow rectangle without turning it into a corridor.
The room resolves into three zones, front to back.
Nearest the door is a floating wood vanity with an integrated white basin. Floating rather than freestanding, because lifting the cabinet clear of the floor lets the flooring run underneath it, and an unbroken floor makes a small room read larger. There is room for a woven basket tucked beneath — part of where the storage went once the closet came out. Above it, an oval mirror and a three-light sconce in warm brass.
Behind that, a half-wall separates the toilet from the wet zone, with the paper holder mounted straight into it. A pony wall earns its place in a room this narrow: the toilet gets its own pocket without the cost, the door swing, or the boxed-in feeling of a full partition.
The back of the room is the shower — a proper walk-in behind a clear glass panel rather than a curtain or a framed enclosure. Glass was the right call. Anything solid or frosted would have stopped the room visually at its halfway point. Clear glass carries the eye to the back wall, so the room reads its full length.
Before
The original bedroom closet before conversion — an underused storage space located between two bedrooms.
The finishes
The shower is lined in white tile set in a vertical stack instead of the usual horizontal offset. Running tile vertically pulls the eye upward, which is exactly the trick you want when the floor is small and the ceiling is standard height. A recessed light sits directly overhead, and a built-in ledge runs along the back wall so nothing has to live on the shower floor.
Fixtures are brass throughout, and consistent everywhere — faucet, shower valves, fixed head, handheld on its slide bar, towel bar, robe hook, paper holder. In a room this size that consistency is not really a style preference. Mixed metals need visual distance to work, and there is none here.
Wood-look flooring runs from the doorway through to the shower threshold, keeping the floor as one continuous surface rather than a series of small zones.
Why this is worth considering in Alexandria
A lot of houses around Alexandria are generous on bedrooms and tight on bathrooms — three or four rooms upstairs sharing a single bath. The usual answer is an addition, with the cost, the permitting and the months that implies.
It is not the only answer. Where there is a closet in the right position and plumbing that can reach it, the room already exists. What it needs is drainage, a vent, waterproofing, and a layout drawn to the inch.
That last part decides these projects. A closet conversion has no slack in it. Vanity, toilet clearance, shower pan, door swing and glass panel all have to be resolved together before anything is demolished, because there is no moving something over by four inches once the walls are open.
The position matters as much as the plumbing. A closet on an interior wall between two bedrooms is close to the ideal candidate — one build, and two rooms stop queuing for the bathroom down the hall.