flseadog - I'm fine with the location as it is. When I came home and learned they had moved it in a bit, I was ready to be upset, but it is just fine. Since the master bath is under construction right now, four of us are showering in there daily, and we all are happy with the elbow room. Thanks for the compliment. An outer curtain made the space seem smaller, and it's minimal already. I'm not thrilled with the fancy hooks though...they fly off the rod when you take the curtain down - I've been hit a couple of times. My husband threw his towel over the hooks yesterday, and when my daughter pulled it off to shower, a hook flew in the toilet. She was not pleased. Oh the joys of togetherness! cassie 225, I don't think you would lose much width in 10-12" of height. It doesn't curve in to the tub until the very lower part. But that's why we did the temporary rod experiment first -- I didn't want to drill holes in the tile until we were sure where we wanted it. Well worth the $10.

I think it would look fine. The problem you may have is finding a shower curtain in an appropriate length. Most shower curtains and liners are pretty much a standard 72" square. Having to find a longer one might narrow your choices considerably. One other thing to think about is ventilation and steam. If the shower curtain goes all the way to the ceiling there isn't much place for steam to escape. It could also lead to mildew problems. If you leave the curtain open afte use so the bath and shower area can dry, the wet curtain will mildew. If you close the curtain after showering so the curtain can dry, there's not going to be much air circulation in your bath/shower area -- which could also lead to mildew.

It's up! DH showered in there last night ("his" bathroom is still down to the studs and beams!)--said it was much roomier inside, even with the further in placement of the bar. That's good since we really couldn't place the bar any further out with the spacing of the tub and toilet. We were trying to cover as much of the bottom edge tub with the curtain as possible, while trying to avoid having the bar look too low in relation to the ceiling. We moved the tension rod up and down a bit in order to determine bar height. I think I'd have preferred the curtain to come down a little lower at the bottom, but compromised, in order to keep the rod itself at a visually appealing or proportionate height. It's all about trade-offs and compromises with this stuff as we have found time and time again. As it is, I think the rod height and the height of the curtain hem off the floor (on ours) are pretty much where one of the how-to sites recommended, so there you go! Thanks for your advice jacobse and John!

We measured the height of the rod in our old hall bathroom before gutting the room so we could try to avoid mounting it as high as that one (that one was 81 1/4" from the floor). I didn't like that a lot of the tub showed below the curtain. Also, the liner didn't hang low enough inside the tub to prevent it from blowing in while showering. We purchased a cheap tension rod at HD the other night because we had to hang something up quickly--I wanted to be able to use the shower yesterday . Will probably try moving it up a bit because it looks a little low for the space (and the liner hangs very low in the tub). Once we determine a good position (that'll take a few go rounds of re-positioning I'm sure!), we can then mark the tile for mounting the permanent rod. Thanks for the advice Sheila (your baths look very nice, BTW!). We're open to more suggestions from the GW gang as well...