Earl Family Cabin

My grandpa built a family cabin back in the 1950s. It has passed down to his kids and now on to us grandkids (we are of course adults at this point with kids and grandkids of our own). This little cabin has immense sentimental value, but we had an equally immense problem recently when the old septic system finally failed and sewage backed up into the cabin. 

We decided to use this opportunity to remodel all 3 bathrooms and add a laundry room to make stays more convenient up there. The space is very limited so it took an enormous amount of design work to bring everything to fruition. Other design challenges were to stay true to the nostalgia and the sentiment and the era of the cabin while still updating it, using materials that would last long-term and be an improvement while staying true to the cabin-y feel and feeling appropriate and local to the area, maintaining the long-established identity of each space, increasing storage and overall function while maintaining the same footprint, creating a luxury design on a bargain budget, and pleasing a whole family of strong-opinioned sisters. 

We moved the downstairs water heater out of the bathroom and up to the closet upstairs next to the other one, added a laundry room,  converted a 3/4 bath to a full bath, and added a linen closet. 

Here are the before pictures and plan/elevation drawings I did of each area: 

ORIGINAL FLOORPLAN

Original floorplan of back entrance area, where most plan changes took place. The front bathroom remained almost the same, only switching the locations of the toilet and vanity, and the upstairs bathroom floorplan remained the same. 

FRONT/GREEN BATHROOM

(The vintage green 1950s fixtures were donated to someone restoring a vintage bathroom.)

BACK/WOOD BATHROOM

UPSTAIRS/WING BATHROOM

LAUNDRY/ENTRY AND LINEN CLOSET

And, here are the After photos as it currently is (still have a few small tweaks and corrections to deal with, but it's pretty close to how it will be).

FRONT/GREEN BATHROOM

(I'm annoyed that the camera makes the tumbled marble tile look very busy and multicolored, but it looks much more uniform and much better in real life. I also should have had the shower curtain on the outside when I took the pictures. I reinstalled the vintage wall heater that I love. The contractor lost its vintage mounting screws that matched so I've since painted the ones I used to mount it. 

BACK/WOOD BATHROOM

(I really love this bathroom. The limestone tile and tongue and groove look gorgeous together and are appropriate to the area. The hinged vanity mirror with artwork on the front turned out cute: my kids gathered wildflowers from the property that we pressed and arranged with a fabric background in the frame. The contractor didn't center the sink properly, so I still need to replace the countertop and relocate the sink and faucet.)

UPSTAIRS/WING BATHROOM

(This one is extra special because it reflects the heritage: my grandpa built the cabin in the 1950s, my dad added this bathroom onto it in the late 1980s, I designed the new vanity custom to the space, and my teenage son, Benjamin, built it for the cabin from my drawings.)

LAUNDRY/ENTRY AND LINEN CLOSET

(This was a BIG deal: finding a way to fit a laundry room and linen closet into the cabin without expanding the footprint. Gone finally are the days of taking sheets and towels home to wash and return on the next visit. Total game-changer!)

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how things have turned out. I feel like we succeeded in honoring my grandpa's legacy with these improvements while greatly enhancing the experience when visiting the cabin.