I noticed the same beveled tile edges on your tub deck. Very nice tile work. Very nice cabinet work. And your material choices are very soothing and flowing to my eye. Your vanity really caught my eye. It is nicely designed. And I like your tub. You get both rectangle and oval shapes. Paint color is deceptive. I have lived with my master bedroom paint for 3 years waiting to make up my mind and repaint with this bathroom remodel. Amount of sunlight, time of day, time of year, type of bulbs, placement of lights, etc can really change the paint color too. I have a wood floor in my master bedroom that throws a lot of yellow up on the walls which I did not take into account. Plus I went with the fad of the year and painted the ceiling the same as the walls and ended up hating it as I laid in bed every night! And I learned that the main color in the base or added colorant always overrides the surface colors in the mix. Good luck with your paint. I have a friend that repainted her mistake red bathroom with one coat of BM Aura green. This post was edited by Anna_in_TX on Sun, Jan 5, 14 at 16:49

I have seen pictures of showers with windows, so it is possible, although that will depend on your preference for privacy/what is outside and getting a really good window, installed very well. I think a lot of people are leary of leaks or in areas where privacy is a concern, so you don't see that many. Could you replace the tub with freestanding, take out the dividing wall and put a 4'x5' shower where the existing shower/closet are? Or keep tub location (switch to freestanding), put shower where toilet is now and toilet where shower/closet it now (turned 90 degrees so tank is next to bottom wall)

This is the first time I am undertaking a bath (or kitchen) renovation and I would love to take advantage of all the good ideas and experience of this site's users. This is not my forever house but will live here with my husband for at least another 5 to 10 years. The kids are all in college or are out. We will be gutting the existing bathroom -- layout below (but not exactly to scale) and we will not be replacing the seldom used tub (and we have two other tubs in the house). I did have a space planner come out and her design is below. It's a nice design and a good option but definitely open to others. In fact, I probably will go without the separate toilet room as has designed in order to save a little on cost. Also, until the room is gutted, we won't know whether the toilet can be easily moved or not. So I need to consider a Plan B of keeping the toilet where it is (and most certainly this will save a bit of money, as well). The other thing that might need a bit of explanation is the existing closet. it's an odd shape closet that goes back around the existing shower. We discovered that odd shape wall in the closet includes an AC duct. Will probably need to keep that where it is. The space planner's design has the shower going into the front half of the closet with the back half being closed off, but with access to a new door in the adjoining bedroom, In fact, I have the original blue prints and there was a door originally there leading into the bathroom - so originally it was a Jack-and-Jill! Although I like the space planner's ideas, I may need to see if I can come up with a floor plan that would save some labor costs, etc, to bring down the overall costs by 10% to 12% Other ideas would be to leave the toilet where is, put the shower where the current tub is, move the vanity down, keep the closet but maybe add a small washer and dryer there or remove part of the closet for more floor space and/or storage. Would love to hear your ideas! Here's the original layout: and the one suggested by the space planner:

From just seeing the plan, this looks like a large bathroom with a decently functional plan. The beauty of a wall and door around the toilet is that one person can be in the toilet while another person is at the sink. Also, the - ahem - smells are more contained so a person can go to the toilet, turn on the fan, and close the door, and the smell won't disturb them while they shower or bathe. If that isn't how you live, by all means, tear down the walls, but you don't have to move the toilet to remove the walls. You talked about moving the tub and/or expanding the shower, but I'm not 100% clear about what you don't like in the current layout on that side of the room. If you're just looking for a bigger shower, I'd take out the linen closet. Expand the shower that way. Then, put a tall cabinet between the vanity and the bathtub (no pipes need to move for this plan, let me know if you need me to do a quick sketch to show what I mean). Or, turn the toilet and put in a new linen closet to the left of the door (the toilet would only need to move a small amount, quick sketch below)