Rusty, After posting on here yesterday, I had a senior moment too. (My wife calls it "earning nursing home points".) We had been having problems with our RO water system that goes to the Refrigerator water and ice dispenser. A month ago, the RO stopped working so we took it apart and replaced the filters, back together, it would not work. Pressure tank seemed not to be working, checked the pressure down to "0". Put in the right amount of air, still no water. Scratch my head for the last 30 days, just about to call the guy I bought it from to get it serviced, because I had obviously done something wrong. Finally yesterday, I wondered, did I turn the valve to "ON" behind the refigerator in the wall????. You guessed it, it was "OFF". I am checking into the nursing home this morning. They will probably not let me take my Walker there and mow. Oh' well......

I assume you're worried about the noise from flushing the toilet. Most of that noise will come from water rushing down the 4" waste line inside the wall. You can reduce that noise to some extent by using cast iron pipe for any long vertical sections of the waste line. Cast iron doesn't transmit as much sound from rushing water as as the plastic piping commonly used for waste plumbing in most new construction. Wrapping the waste line with rock wool can also be helpful for reducing sound transmission. It's much denser than fiberglass batts, so it's more effective at muffling sound. Rock wool can also be effective for reducing the transmission of other sounds through walls and floors. My house has rock wool between all second story floor joists and in walls surrounding bathrooms. I think it helps a great deal. Be sure you specify a solid door with the absolute minimum of a gap between the door bottom and the floor for your powder room. If you don't, your staggered studs and whatever else you do for noise reduction -- will be for naught. Almost all sounds emanating from a bathroom or powder room come through or under the door.

Not many people cook anymore. That includes some KD's, but architects especially. Many couldn't even put together a simple stir fry if you put all of the ingredients in front of them already chopped, much less gather them all and then wash and chop them. "Menial" tasks like that just don't cross their minds. Making something "pretty" does. So, you'll see attention paid to the cabinet brand and doorstyle, but not the fact that the range isn't vented, or the sink is in the wrong spot. If you want to get right down to the nub, there are plenty of people who come on here who don't see the value in a KD either. They think that all you have to do is throw some boxes at the existing layout after you've taken down a wall and it'll be magically "perfect". Hardly anyone analyzes themselves for how a meal is really constructed in a self time and motion study. That's why you see people coming on here with barrier islands or 19 feet between the sink and fridge, or island cooktops in a kitchen not big enough to swing a cat. They think they know how they cook, but the reality is, they don't know what they don't know. They may have adapted to the current poor design, and they certainly don't have the vision that it could be so much BETTER and safer if it had a different layout. And people only really notice bad design, when it's bad enough to inconvenience them regularly and for them to gripe about. Good design, and things that function as they should, is invisible, and thus isn't "valuable" to many people. People simply do not realize the amount of work that goes into creating a good design so that a kitchen is a productive and pleasant space to occupy.

"We will tile ceiling if we have to, but I'm afraid the shower will feel closed in with the darkness of our tile." I understand your concern, but your tile really isn't that dark. In addition, you have a can light in the shower ceiling, so darkness should not be an issue. I've tiled ceilings in dark charcoal tile with no "cave effect". If there is no lighting in the shower than dark tile can have that effect. But with active lighting? And with light gray versus a dark tile?I don't see an issue, but you're there and I'm not. Lesser alternatives that I don;t particularly care for, but I'll toss out just because we're throwing idea out there? Frame the perimeter of your ceiling with a border made from your wall tile. The border tile will cover the wall/ceiling gap, leaving the main field of your ceiling painted white. Tile the entire ceiling with a white/light tile to your liking.