"What did you do at the area where your doors will go?" Huh?, I was supposed to plan that? Shiiite! We have 12 X 24 tiles, the end walls where the doors will go are ~ 36" long, so two tiles cut to 18" side by side. Doors will go somewhere on the tile, centered on the sill. I know some of the many hundreds/thousands of dollars spent on tools/supplies was for special drill bits, so hopefully DH has that all figured out... Got the niche cleaned, asked DH to caulk all the edges so that I could take a pic, he figured he didn't have enough time before heading out to Karate, so the plan is to do it tomorrow night...now that we're on the home stretch, I'm not really needing to nag so much, the hardest part is over, and I think he's almost as anxious as me to have it all done. (He still needs to make the medicine cabinet, and I still need to design it, once that is done I can get the carpenter to make the storage cupboard for over the toilet. I want them both to line up exactly on the bottom edge, so can't order one until the other is made...)

Hopefully this works. I have two baths we just finished. The master is Daltile Brancacci with the resin chair rail and floral listello Fastfloors.com had this for 1/2 the price as special order from home depot. You have to call them though after you get your order set up to fix any shipping issues (they do each type of tile as a seperate order so shipping looks much worse than it really is until you call them). The other is our kids bath with 4 1/4" plain white tile and 2" cobalt blue glass from mirage tile. Note that the glass tile is thicker so you will have to put down more thinset behind the remaining tile and the grout joints around the glass will be larger due to difference in tile sizes. Here is a link that might be useful: fastfloors

We have a granite shower and did go ahead and use the same granite on the vanity. It doesn't seem too overwhelming to us, especially since they're on different walls so you don't really see it all at the same time. Here's the shower: and the vanity:

Motherof3 I am a mother of 3 too and have also used variations of that for user names, etc.! So we think alike, especially considering that you like the natural stone! There is no question that marble is higher maintenance than ceramic or other materials. I have been living with the new bathrooms for six months and this is what I can tell you. First, we are most definitely not people who are going to squeegee the shower every time we use it. But since I want the shower to remain nice, this is what I do. First, the bar soap is outlawed because you can't use cleaners that will remove the soap scum and in my view, the specially formulated cleaners (like 409 for stone) are pretty useless. Second, we put in a handshower and we do spray down the shower with it after each use. That is easy because we continue to run the rainhead and the body sprays while we run the handshower so we don't stand in there naked and freezing which would discourage compliance! The handshower is key!! Third, we have no door, so that reduces mildew issues. We do use a mild bleach solution every week, which takes care of mildew and cleans the grout. Where a bit of soapy film (DH cheats a bit on the soap rule I think) builds up around the bottom course of tile, I use a tiny bit of soft scrub very sparingly in place of the useless stone cleaners. Finally, during the past week, I have noticed a bit of rust around the drain, where the water sits a bit before the shower dries out. I used a bit of BKF on it and now, after I shower, I dry off the floor around the drain by just throwing the bath mat into the shower and leaving it there until the next shower. I am willing to do that much. With those caveats, I have to say that I am loving the bathrooms. There is nothing quite like marble. It is so soothingly spa-like. I smile every time I go in there! Hope this helps.