GW would not let me put this in my post above - what up with that?

You could just add a door from the half-bath into your bathroom. Less odd.

i do think a two-entry shower would work if you had his-n-hers bathrooms, just share the shower inbetween.

That never even occurred to me! Have to consider if the price of having another bathroom (even just a half) to clean is worth it to keep the mess of outside work and dirt out of the main part of our master bath. It's all a balancing act, isn't it?

Kinda like this? With one opening off the mud room, the other from the bedroom?

• Kind of, but instead of the opening leading into the shower 'area', it would actually be a shower with 2 shower doors, one entered from the master bath and the other from the back entry powder room. Clear as mud? It probably won't work and would certainly be problematic for placement of the shower head. It means 2 walls of the shower are doors, leading into different rooms, so no matter where you place the shower head it will be aimed at a door and that's not optimal. But isn't that part of the goal of designing a house - coming up with solutions for your particular problems? Except, the solutions are supposed to actually work ;-) Oh, well....

DLM, What's the space to the left of the half bath door, by the stairs? Can that be an entry to the shower? That way, you can put the shower head on the stair-side wall (where the some of your plumbing already is) and the water will direct to the one solid wall left, instead of at a door opening.

And depending on how "nice" you want to keep your MBa and vs. how much "outside dirt" the functional bath will end up attracting, having a separate space for a pseudo mud room half bath may well be worth it so you can keep the rest of the MBa as nice as you'd like, even if it IS another bathroom to clean. When I'm outside and dirty, I personally would love to have a half bath close by the back door, instead of traipsing dirt through the house, or taking the time to clean up by the door before coming in (especially when you really have to "go" - you gotta go when you gotta go :-)

Waki that area is space for coat hooks. It would make more sense to me to access the shower from the bathroom area as opposed to having to 'go' and then walking out and around to the shower. But I see what you mean about the shower pointing at the door.

omelet my husband wants an outdoor shower but it probably won't be for a while. And I doubt he'll use it in January no matter what he tells me!

Yes, I meant to access the shower from w/in the bathroom, as in, open that space up to make it part of the bathroom.

I saw something like you're describing -- a shower with two doors opening into two different bathrooms -- on an HGTV show. The people were all a bit confuddled by it, and it did seem ... odd.

The biggest issue I'd see: lack of privacy. Shower doors tend to be glass, and even if it's not "plain see-through glass", it's not like a solid wall between the two bathrooms. Also, you don't want your shower door to go to the ceiling; you want steam to escape rather than staying in that small space and turning to mold. This means you'd have a big gap atop each shower door, meaning you'd be able to hear a person knocking about in the other bathroom.

I think the idea of a shared shower ROOM is sensible. It's a budget-saver and not a big sacrifice in terms of function -- people are rarely showering in two places in the house at the same time. And the shower ROOM avoids all the above problems.

I just tried to google for J&J shower - comes up with his/hers wedding showers :-/

mrspete - interesting that you've seen this on HGTV. If this back entry bath was going to be used by guests as a powder room the privacy thing might be an issue but for just the 2 of us I'm less concerned about it. I would want obscure glass regardless - just don't care for the maintenance of clear - and the door on the 'powder room' side could be to the ceiling or a soffit and the exhaust fan in the MBa would be the one to use for showering. There would of course also be an exhaust fan in the powder room area. Still not sure if it'll work and will noodle this around in my head some more!

We had an MCM home with a bath set-up like lazy garden's rendering, above. The W&D were also in the "tub room." It worked great for DH and me. We each had our own "get ready" bathroom and just shared the tub/shower. When we had guests, DH would move into "my" bathroom and the guests would use the other side. During the normal course of the day, the interior doors stayed open. If one of the internal doors was closed, one knew that the tub room was in use.

I think the dual-entry shower sounds like a great idea, but would suffer in the execution for the reasons noted above. With no true door between the two rooms, the shower user (unless he steps through and locks the door of the other bathroom) is at the mercy of someone entering the other bathroom during his shower. Likewise, I would think one would be reluctant to use the powder room when someone is showering on the other side of a piece of glass.

If you're set on the idea, I wonder if there would be a way to use pocket doors or barn doors to provide a privacy component just outside the glass doors of the shower? It would allow the person showering to pull across a pocket door in the other bathroom without traipsing INTO the other bathroom to lock the entire door. That would leave the other bathroom available for use by other people.

jakabedy I'm sure you're right - the idea sounds great but lacks real life practicality. The only people using that powder room would be DH and me and we'll 'share' bathroom time/space for a lot but not everything which is as delicate as I can make that!