Perhaps I am missing something. We have the same type of guest bathroom, i.e. it is a 4 piece instead of a 2 piece power room. We don't like the tile around the shower enclosure either. In our situation, we are spending money and focus right now on a whole bunch of other energy conservation and renovation projects(per the link below). What did we do? We simply purchased a very nice shower curtain. If guest are sufficiently nosy to pull back what is obviously a shower curtain, they can do so at their own peril. :-) Re hardwood in the 'powder room', if I imagine w_anne as you described it, having the hardwood in the power room could look VERY nice depending on the color scheme. We have dard Jatoba Expresso in our kitchen / dining / family room which could look like in the powder room. If it is a lighter shade of brown then the hardwood might not look as nice. The other issue of course is how confident are you that the toilet leak has been fixed? (I had to bring it up). Lastly, how powerful is the fan in the bathroom? And is there a timer on the fan? You could (conjecture on my part) down the road have moisture caused issues with the hardwood it all of a sudden your lifestyle changes and the shower is used much more frequently. I hope that helps. Dan Here is a link that might be useful: Home Renovation and Energy Conservation Projects

Hi tmnca! One thing to think about with the Kohler shower pans is whether you may ever be using a shower stool with legs. If you were to get a longer shower bench, the Salient may cause problems because the oval really does have quite a bit of "curb" to it, as shown in Badgergal's photo of her son's shower. With a small shower stool set in the center of the shower, it is fine. If you ever need a longer shower stool, the Bellweather gives you a surface not impeded with the raised oval. I does, however, have a slant to the overall shower floor, so that must be taken into account. I have seen the Bellweather in person. It is a non-slip surface. It almost felt like a surface that would make me trip - catching my foot if I did not pick it up and step. Like if I dragged the foot, it would catch and I would trip and fall. It was a funny feeling to the bottom, and I wondered how it would feel when wet. It was NOT going to feel slippery, though! As for tile in a shower floor, the other reason to have small tiles (besides the grout lines giving traction), is that the small tiles allow the tile layer to better cope with the slant toward the drain. Larger tiles only allow you to slant in one direction. The smaller the tile, the better it is for following contours on a floor that is flowing to a drain from all directions.

Minpho, the grout they added does nothing. Grout is not waterproof. It is like a placeholder between the tiles that directs the water downhill to the drain and then when it does let small amounts of water through (because it is porous), it also allows that same water right back out again as it dries (because it is porous). Grout has worked fine for centuries despite this if the shower is built correctly underneath the tile. A properly sloped and waterproofed shower floor never looks like yours did after 8 days of drying out. Even with marble ("hard sponges") and grout (which lets water in and back out), your shower floor has an obvious problem. You can see what it is. The wet area is not sloping enough toward the drain to dry out, or it is not built on a waterproof bed - and the soggy bed underneath it is full of stagnant water that is keeping your tile wet. Or both. Your builder is responsible to give you a waterproof shower that does not leak, does not pool water underneath the tile, and dries out after showers. There are things that can help you in this situation, but you must act now to handle this correctly. Listen to the people here who have "PRO" under their pictures. Most of them have great advice - especially anyone having to do with tile. You may also have help available from your building inspector. Was your shower inspected as it was being built? Does your town do that? Did they okay the pre-slope and the waterproofing method? Go read the things that Creative Tile Eastern CT linked you to read. Ask more questions if it does not make sense to you. You MUST at this point make yourself understand how a shower is supposed to be built because you are now in negotiations with a builder who is not going to want to tear the whole thing out and redo it. Re-read what Creative Tile told you. He is telling you how to talk to your builder about this, what to ask about how the shower was built. You first have to read up on showers and understand terms like "pre-slope," "waterproofing," "shower pan membrane," and "clamping drain." Because otherwise, you can't discuss this and negotiate with your builder. That is why sometimes having the building inspector on your side about whether the shower was inspected during its construction (or not) is good. But if your building inspectors don't do that with new houses, then they are useless to you. Calling the town building department and asking if the inspectors do inspection on showers to ensure they are sloped and waterproofed properly before they are tiled in new home construction will tell you whether the building department will be any help to you. If they are supposed to do the inspection and your builder did not have it done, then the building inspector may come look at your shower and tell the builder to fix it.

I am not a professional but it seems like a penny wise/pound foolish decision not to replace as much as possible when you are doing a major renovation. Everything has a useful life so at some point I would assume you would need to replace. I remodeled relatively recently but prior to that I had to replace a cartridge and it was an expensive plumbing job. As I recall I also felt lucky that the plumber was able to find something that was compatible - ugly but compatible :-). Also - although you didn't mention it, since you are complete remodeling anyway, you wouldn't be limited to Moen fixtures that fit the existing plumbing.