Thanks for the nice compliments, Snowyshasta and organic-donna. We absolutely love our bathroom, now that we've been using it for a few months. We also saw this design and "borrowed'' it. Actually we saw a bathroom in a showroom, and immediately knew it was what we wanted -- the colors, the look, the fixtures. It wasn't too feminine, or too masculine, but just right for a his and her bath. I just asked my DH what he liked best about the bath (he's sitting here watching basketball), and he said the shower. It is equipped with three heads -- a handheld, a stationary one and a rain head. "It's like being in a spa,'' he said. I love all the storage. As you can see it's not a huge room, but we created a serene space for the both of us, with every nice feature we wanted, and with enough storage for all my girlie things away from our three teenage daughters, and our collection of nice towels. My husband loves having his own space too. His, of course, is not as packed as mine, but we actually still have some half empty drawers and shelves. The tower is so handy. Our cabinet maker tried to talk me into making the glass doors on that tower a frosted glass, but I insisted on clear glass, and I'm glad. Doesn't look great in the picture, but I love that I can see everything in there. You can always hide things -- like first aid medicines -- in pretty baskets and still keep them there. We love the radiant floor heating, and we especially love the Robern medicine cabinets, which have mirrors inside the doors and even along the back of them. Love, love love our new bath. It was costly, and like you, Organic-donna, we worry about money, especially with the economy being as it is. But we think we were smart shoppers about everything we bougtht, and know that if we ever want to sell our house (but we have no such plans), we'll get our money back. We built it for us, and every single day I am grateful for this pretty bath and have no regrets that we did this. Besides, I grew up in family of nine -- and we all shared one bath! I'm done with sharing.

Sympathies in advance: Ours is in week 9 now but we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. All materials were ordered 3 months ahead by the GC and were available as of the start date. We knew that there would be built-in delays in the schedule, for example, while granite was templated and cut. However, further delays occurred as the granite broke in the final cuts and we needed to locate another acceptable slab, needed to change the glass supplier at the last minute as the first one suddenly couldn't meet requirements, etc. The noisiest part was the demolition in the first couple of days, so not so much of an issue although the vibrations wiggled loose the pot lights in our kitchen below! DH works from home and previously survived a kitchen reno, which took only 5 weeks in total, but was a much bigger disruption to the main living space. Luckily we were able to move out of the bedroom and use another full bath. The bedroom was well draped in plastic and the floor covered with boards and tarps, but it was a disaster. Inconvenient yes, but well worth the effort to temporarily relocate. Just make sure you move enough of your stuff, just in case...

I've never seen or done this before, but it's an interesting concept. Your salesperson is right. Bullnose is not cheap, by any stretch. For one shower, where the bullnose frames the entrance, as well as capping the curb, maybe the edge of a bench, and framing a niche-- I've seen just the bullnose run over 200.00. Your sales person's one sharp cookie! The only downside would be that the tumbled marble will be a little thicker than the rest of the tile. But it might make for an interesting design element, too.

hey bill - i forgot to thank you for your kind words from last week :) thanks i think we figured this out... when i got home & started trying to figure it out with the things in front of me, i remembered that we can also mount the "bench" on top of the tile, which is what john is going to try. he's confident that he can get the tile square, and then he will drill the holes through the tile & kerdi once they are set. i am nervous about him cutting through the tile, since it would be hard to get a broken tile off the kerdi safely, but he says he is confident he can do it and it would be extremely bad luck for a tile to break. i have to trust him and our luck :) here is a quick pic of my tiling job on the tub surround... not perfect, but i'm pretty pleased, and john said he can make it look fine with grout. i left the bullnose off the edges so i can tile once he's done with his drywall perfecting, and i decided at the last minute to put a blue tile on the small wall, after my thinset had been used up, so i just popped one of the white tiles off & that's the hole you see. i'm just so happy to see tile finally - it's all been in boxes & in my head :) he's finally going "Oh! now i see what you meant by scattering the glass tiles around... now i see how the blue paint will highlight those..." I've seen it all along, but in my head! glad it's turning out like it is in my head. lisa