I have a small house. Small baths. You don't like housecleaning nor wiping down after kids. One thing I did was I got rid of the ceramic tile tub surround and had white swanstone panels installed. I never want to clean mildewed grout again. I love tile and put it above the panels. Yes, I prefer, way prefer the look of tile but not at the cost of cleaning it. The swanstone looks pretty good. Sorry no pics. I have two Americast tubs and I think they are acrylic..I love them. Had cast iron before. They are shiny, sparkly, fresh and white. I think my cleaners use a spray to clean them. I am glad you are thinking this thru before you do extreme drastic measures. 1000s f is not going to be better with the addition of windows. Editing, building up, and up going storage will help, not windows. Natural light is overrated. Look at small space solutions and not at glam or cliched luxury sites. We built closets onto our bedroom walls instead of new dressers. Up to the ceiling. Think California closets. With drawers and cabinets. Not pretty but functional. We have ikea Brimnes headboards with under bed storage drawers in our new house. I am an ikea slave. Your family is always going to take a lot of time and energy and that's just the way it is. A 1000sf house will not be easy but it's home. And I love love your kitchen. Think about the life you live for now. Think first before acting.

Janieful: "The advanced toilet makes sense to me - at least much more than a separate bidet would. I have never used either, but bidets take up so much space. The one in all model is much more practical." The advanced toilet seats are not, strictly speaking, direct replacements for bidets, though one generic term for advanced toilet seats is "bidet seat." The first and foremost function of an advanced toilet seat is water washing a bit further to the rear than a bidet cleanses. Cleansing the anus with water is far superior to wiping (and spreading) with dry paper. Most current models of advanced toilet seat have a second washing function called "feminine cleaning," or a variant thereof, which has many similarities to the function of a bidet. As you may guess, that function directs the water somewhat further forward than the primary function does. However, in "real" bidets, the water comes from the front, whereas in advanced toilet seats, the water approaches from the rear, so there is a difference. The various brands of advanced toilet seats approach these functions in different manners. Inax, which invented the advanced toilet seat category, determined that the optimal angle of incidence of the spray on the anus should be 70 degrees from horizontal or, in other words, just 20 degrees from vertical. The Inax advanced toilet seats therefore have spray wands for posterior cleansing that extend out fairly far, so that the spray can be more nearly vertical. Toto, the biggest player in the market, was obsessed by the spectre of "backwash," the (small proportion of the) water that rebounds off the user's posterior, and accordingly Toto Washlets are designed to spray water at the anus at 43 degrees from horizontal, which reduces (but does not not eliminate) the amount of backwash that hits the spray wand. But spray directed at Toto's 43 degree angle does not wash as effectively as the 70 degree spray of the Inax models does. Inax addresses the backwash matter with an aggressive self-cleaning cycle for the spray wands, executed both before and after each use. As to the feminine function, Toto can get by with a single wand for both posterior and feminine cleansing, with two spray nozzles in the single wand, because the 43 degree spray angle for the posterior wash already is so shallow. Inax has to use a separate dedicated spray wand for feminine cleansing, because the wand that Inax uses for posterior cleansing would not be positioned well for the feminine cleansing function. But, whether or not you use the toilet seat for bidet-like functions, water-assisted posterior cleansing is a huge step up from dry wiping after a bowel movement. There probably is no way to upgrade your bathroom more effectively than to replace a passive toilet seat with an advanced toilet seat.

I imagine there is a design principle that would serve as a guide as to how long a shower can be without looking odd. Unfortunately, I don't know where to find that information! Maybe someone else on this forum can help with that. My current linen closet (in the hallway) is 24" wide but due the framing of the door, the opening is only 17" wide. It is not very functional, IMHO. I recently built a new floor to ceiling closet in the master bedroom with sliding shoji doors (still waiting for the doors to be built). I included an 18" wide linen 'closet' and the space is totally accessible - much better design. Additionally, the shelves are on drawer runners because the closet is 24" deep and being able to slide out the shelves makes it much easier to get to that towel in the back! So, I suggest you take a good hard look at your linen situation and try to picture yourself actually getting things out and putting them away. From there you should be able to come up with a good solution. From someone who is on a mission to enlarge her house by getting rid of stuff!

As has been mentioned, 30" is snug for a toilet space. It gets tighter when you mount a TP holder on one wall, etc. Witht eh glass wall above, your 30" space won't necessarily be claustrophobic, but if you can bump it to 36" the space will be much improved, both for use and for cleaning. The 36" toilet space will reduce the shower to roughly 42", which is plenty good. As to the plumbing being on the hex-marked wall and you wanting a shower head on the right exterior wall, yes, you can surface mount the plumbing and run the pipe around the wall(s). Or, you can have the supply valve on the hex-wall, run the plumbing within that wall up to the ceiling, then across the ceiling (within the joist bay), and then have it come out of the ceiling and surface mount the short stub and the shower arm on the tiled surface of that exterior wall. Your joist bays should be well insulated. Keep the insultion above the pipe, have no insulation between the pipe and the shower ceiling. Plus, pitch the pipe that is within the ceiling for drainage so when the water is turned off, the pipe drains via gravity out the shower head. In my master shower, I have the plumbing for both shower heads running through the ceiling. No issues in 20+ years of freezing winters.