apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

As someone who has a senior citizen living with her...I love this! My Mom keeps looking at those hideous tubs that have the "fold out" door and I keep cringing.

On second thought...stepping UP to get out might trap her.

Next!

no on the sunken tub...how do you get out of that thing?

I bet there's treasure or human remains under there.

Yes, I agree with Michael...or....it just fell through the floor one day and they decided to put a new floor around it.

It's NUTS!

The other bathroom is SO beautiful that I am saving that picture and giving it my contractor and telling him--here, just do this.

In this case, it looks like an idea gone wrong. I'm not apposed to something sunken, but in this case, no as the whole thing just looks odd and it also looks to be a cheap remodel too.

For seniors, the best solution is a walk in shower with little to no ledge for them to get into and out of. Right now my Mom has to climb in the shower, which is a standard bathub with sliding glass doors but she does have hand rails however to assist her, which our good friend and landlord put in shortly before she moved in. They have talked about possibly replacing the tub w/ a shower but so far, the tub stays.

what I think is a really good idea are those tubs that are sunken into raised platform that you either step up into or can sit on and then swing yourself into like many whirlpool tubs. But then again, being older and with arthoritis, it may still be difficult to get down into them no matter what and once in, getting up can be a near impossibility so showers are really the best solution outside of one of those deep Japanese tubs that allow you to sit like on a bar stool and yet still soak away.

oh my... my brain is refusing to process that tub. What on earth was the thought behind that?

The idea just doesn't work, does it? Sure you can bathe in it, but a 'sunken tub' needs some sort of frame around it, really, or it's just a hole in the floor. Still, someone was at least thinking "outside the box."

In fact, I think I've seen at least one clawfoot tub online that had a frame put around it and it looked pretty good.

The problem with showers is that many seniors still prefer a bath (my mom is one).

The sunken tub is a bit odd, but that tile is fabulous!

The "tile" looks to me like linoleum in the picture with the sunken tub. I think it's very strange, but has some possibilities for couples. I'm just sayin'.

I would love it if the floor (or ceiling, as it were) had the feet of the tub sticking down into the room. That would be pretty unique, and funny, I think.

But yeah, I agree that it seems hard to get in/out of. And I'm an able-bodied 20-something.

Get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I would totally end up falling into that tub... and it's in a guest room? Oh dear....

that's weird

Light fixtures - I love, love, love them! Has anyone seen something similar anywhere?

As for the sunken clawfoot - what a shame.

I for one happen to think the idea is viable, but the very poor execution gave it no chance.

My parents once bought a vacation house at a lake that had the exact same thing -- a clawfoot tub sunken into the floor. It was on the first floor, and if you went down to the basement there was the underside of the tub hanging down below the ceiling. It was simply resting on its own lip; the legs had been removed. We never did find out how it got that way, and eventually they remodeled the bathroom into something more normal. Not hard to get out of if you are a person who can sit on the floor and stand back up again.

I don't see how this is any harder to get out of than a normal tub. No matter how you slice it, you have to get your leg over the ledge.

BTW, I kind of like the sunken tub, not to be contrary or anything, but it's kind of cool and the bathroom looks so minimal otherwise (aside from the tile, which I also love and is totally NOT cheap linoleum...)

I think it's neat.

I saw a picture for a similar sunken clawfoot bathtub. In that case, the tub was installed through the floor so that its metal bottom was closer to the wood stove in the room below it! I wonder...

Now how do you know it's a clawfoot?

Alternate possibility: The floor provides ample room to spread out the 12 pack while your soakin'.

ummm....

It gives me the hee-bee-gee-bees.

How do you keep water from getting all over the floor? I tend to move the faucet sometimes and guest's would need to adjust as well depending on how tall or short they are. I can totally see myself slipping as I step out of the tub. Hmmm.......this is too deep for me to think about at this time of night.

Oh, man. That sunken tub reminds me of the sunken toilets in a lot of Asian public restrooms. Ew.

I had this exact same tile in the bathroom of the house I grew up in. It's ceramic, not linoleum as someone else had said.

I once looked at a house that had a sunken tub like this, as part of a Janes house design, here in Pasadena, built in the 20's. Apparently they were popular then. I remember thinking it was strange, if you're not careful, you could fall in it.

Well, I suppose you could sit on the back end and slide right in...

what peripatetic19 said, yikes....

That is very dangerous.

What a waste of a clawfoot tub.

It's confusing to my early morning brain...

and I think my boyfriend would sneak into the bathroom while I was showering and peek over the top curtain and scare the shit out of me....

I kind of like it. the combo of the tile and odd, spare layout remind me of the hostels i stayed at in Italy...

I can't help but think about many reasons why this is a bad idea. For instance...

1. When you sit in the tub, you get a unattractive view of the toilet and of anything that might be on the floor (or crawling on it)...not very spa like.

2. Where do you rest your arms when you're in the tub... on the floor?

3. Since there is now a whole on the floor, there are more chances that water will go under the floor and this could create water damages right inside the floor...not good...

4. I wonder what a structural engineer would think about this set up. It's one thing to have a tub of water on top of a floor supported by many joists, so the weight is evenly distributed. But what supports the tub now?

5. Don't walk in drunk or half asleep. If you step to the left a little too much you might seriously hurt yourself.

ChristineBadina, it is harder to get out of because instead of just stepping over the edge of the tub, you have to step up to a higher level, like getting out of a swimming pool.

If this were a daring remodel, at least they were trying!

But it totally reminds me of poor Tom Hanks in "the money pit".

That would be great for washing my dogs. They have a hard time jumping up into the tub. (Pugs. Pugs that love baths and run for the ledge when I ask them "wanna take a shower?" )

I kinda like it, but would not want to have to put my bare bum on the floor getting into it. I'd also hope there was great structural support underneath! A full tub is really heavy!

gross, dirt, seeing the base of the toilet, it's all so cringe-worthy.

the ONLY thing that is good for is making a place to keep your orchids watered/humidified. I would use it just to have plants in there. Very tall plants, maybe...
That's all it's good for.

That or beer with ice in it. No, people pee and poop in there.

Come again, it's just plain old weird. It's like something you'd see in one of those cabins where white trash people would live... like, for some reason, it would be "rigged" that way due to circumstances. Like a car on a block? But a tub under the floor? I would get rid of it as soon as humanely possible. I'd have nightmares about falling in and breaking a leg... or NECK!