neighbors had their old claw foot tub professionally refinished about a year ago and it looks like crap. it always showed brushstrokes (arent the new finished sprayed on ?). I agree with Kashka kat - try to find something that works with that odd color. OR go buy new ... might be worth the $$ and fewer headaches. IF you decide to try to work the existing fixtures in, DO get rid of the wood toilet seat and the terra cotta (?) floor - they are making the tan of the porcelain look really really bad. Try a white seat and maybe incorporate that clay-pink color into the paint in the room. It may look good with navy blue walls. If you want dramatic Deco, look at old Art deco prints till you find one that uses that clay pink color and use the other colors from the print in the room..

I'll respond to a bunch of things at once here: The general consensus from you guys seems to be that we should have a wiping technique chat and have those flushable wipes. That was what I was leaning towards as well. Thank you to whoever it was that mentioned making sure they say "flushable". We don't have him enough to be on constant potty patrol, monitoring his progress for several weeks straight, so whatever we do about this has to fit the amount we have him and I think that approach is worth a shot. So, now the hard part of the problem: What do I do about getting BF to talk with him? BF is a good dad, but he's not comfortable with that sort of things and he's not all that patient. So I know he will feel pressured into giving this tutorial, that he will hate it, and I suspect he will come off as grouchy during it, rather than matter-of-fact. I was thinking of waiting to bring it up again until there is another pair of excessively poopy underwear, but I think I would rather be proactive and prevent future messes. Should I ask him what he will say to A__, and suggest he do a practice chat to me? (He'll think that's totally lame, but it might make him more comfortable with A__) Any suggestions? I have no clue how to encourage my BF on talking to his son about wiping properly and I need some ideas. Or should I just do it myself next time A__ is here? Tell BF that I'm buying wipes and ask if he wants to talk to A__ about it, or if I should (I'm nearly certain he will say he doesn't want to). Then tell A__ "Hey, I bought these for you, because you said that even though you try your best, you have trouble wiping well. [Insert calm and matter-of-fact wiping tutorial here] and then if the paper is still dirty when you do the 'check' at the end, use one of these, just like you did with the paper, but they're wet, so they'll help. Check again, and if it's still dirty, use one more. Flush the wipes with everything else and wash your hands with soap. If you're still dirty, you can have a quick shower - I know you prefer baths, but this would just be a quick shower so you can soap up your bum, and you wouldn't even have to get your face or hair wet. I'll ask you tomorrow night if the wipes made it easier for you, and if they did, Dad or I will tell Mom that you liked them and that you'd like them at her house too."

Seems to be the consensus here. I found a couple pics online of lattice that looked good in vanities, but they were either nice quality wood stained lattice placed squarely and/or what looks to me like a smaller grid. I like the other options above, or would just do solid wood and bring texture in with other things like towels and rugs, as well as art. I never think about needing texture in the permanent elements in a bath because they are often too difficult to keep clean.

I would love to see your unconventional master bath!! Our plan started with a first-floor master bedroom /bath plus an extraordinarily poorly placed powder room. You noted above that you don't like cleaning bathrooms -- I'm with you on that. Since it's just me and my husband most of the time, I don't see the point in two toilets on the first floor ... so we moved the powder room next to the master bath and removed the toilet from the master bath. So we're planning the powder room to be adjacent from BOTH the master bedroom AND the main house ... and then we have the bathing facilities separate. Unlike toilets-shoved-in-closets, the powder room is 5' the short direction, so it's large enough for comfort, and I only have one toilet to clean on the first floor. I've removed the other parts of the house, so it looks kind of confusing ... you'll have to trust me that it fits in nicely with the rest of the house ... at the foot of the tub, that's a little ledge and a TV for my husband ... that's a linen tower to the left of the vanity ... that's the shower head floating in mid-air /obviously it'll be attached to the wall: I definitely see your point about two standard bathrooms being more economical, just trying to figure out for myself if I was thinking of doing something different for the sake of being different or if it would actual make life easier for my family! Walking yourself through various options is a good way to determine that. We personally are sold on the above bath layout because my husband likes to stay in the tub for hours at a time (he often "reserves" the tub before a, so we decided it makes sense to place the toilet close-but-separate. Also, what computer program are you using? :) HGTV Home and Landscape Platinum Suite. It's nothing special. I drew up your latest suggestion in this program. Concerns: - If you're trying to have kids share, you need a sink in the toilet closet. Otherwise, you still have a problem with the kid in the toilet closet coming out and having no sink available to him ... if you're going to do a toilet-in-a-closet, I'd put a small pedestal sink in there too. - You have a bottleneck in the sink area. If the kids are using this area at the same time, you're going to have people trying to squeeze past people at the sink. - I forgot the exact square footage and have already cleared it out of my computer program, but it was in the 130s ... so it's still bigger than two simple bathrooms and has water walls spread around. However, if the access is off a common hallway, having two baths right beside each other seems silly to me I think the two baths side-by-side appear silly because they're floating in mid-air. If we had a whole floorplan and could see one bedroom to the left of the back-to-back baths /two bedrooms to the right of the back-to-back baths, it'd look different. It'd look like the bathrooms each "belonged" to those bedrooms, though they're accessed through the hall. Mrs. Pete has some great ideas. keeping your water from the same source, but with two separate you'll definitely have an easier time selling. best of luck! I agree that most people would be attracted to two plain bathrooms rather than a "creative" layout. With resale in mind, here's a question: How long do you anticipate staying in this house? If you're going to move before the kids are teens, I'd say go with one simple bathroom. One bathroom would be enough for them until they start in with make-up /hair and shaving. I think that a girls bath and a boys bath might be nice - perhaps the girls bath has one sink and more storage / makeup area and a tub and the boys get 2 sinks and a shower unit, etc That'd work fine if the OP ends up with a nice even split of 2 girls and 2 boys ... but since half these children aren't even conceived yet, that's a guess.