Tile surrounds look so very nice. I really love the look. That said, I think I'm glad we have one-piecers in both bathrooms (one shower-tub combo and one shower only). These aren't new units, the house is 40 years old and they came with the house. One day we'll replace them, but there's no hurry. My daughter's rental has tile in both upstairs bathrooms, one tub-shower combo and one walk-in-and-have-a-stroll shower. We've used both on numerous occasion as she sometimes goes out of town on business and we babysit, or recently she had a new baby and I went to help out. The shower in particular needs all sorts of spot scrubbing to keep the tile and grout clean. My daughter is a bit of a clean freak (didn't get it from me!) and even she has trouble keeping up with shower maintenance. This really made my mind up for me for what we'll do one of these years - solid surface of some sort despite the fact that I love the look of tile.

caligirl - yeah, i hear ya on the toilet. Our house is over 100 years old, so pretty sure the standards for spacing wouldn't even be possible to accomplish in our tiny space. Lol! We are used to it, so it's really not a big deal for us. I'm not sure of exact measurements on either side of the toilet, but it's not too awful. It's not spacious, but it's not the worst. In comparison to many other homes in our little town, this is considered a large second bathroom! When we went house hunting 10 years ago, we really wanted to be close to the college my husband works at since it's a beautiful neighborhood, and that means older homes like ours. And about 90% of the ones we looked at had sub-optimal layouts for bathrooms or kitchen (and often both). As quirky and annoying as some of this is, it's actually a far step above some of the awful things we had as alternative options when we bought. There's basically 3 choices in our town - 100+ year old victorian with wonky renovations or bad layouts that need fixing, 1970s homes that are horribly dated and in less than desirable neighborhoods, or really overpriced brand new mcmansions. :-/ Or building new, I suppose. Here's a 2nd floor layout. I'm going to be straight to the point: we really don't want to take on a massive project that changes the footprint and walls of our second floor in order to perfect our bathroom. If it was just me? Sure. I'm up for anything. But I know my husband well enough to know he hates change and he would never go for it. I have a hard enough time convincing him to paint a room, I can't imagine he could visualize, let alone approve, that kind of change. Lol! Things that may be helpful to know about the rest of our house: we have a 3rd floor attic master bedroom with full bath (shower, jacuzzi tub, double sink, and walk in closet), and we have a first floor bath as well. Our main goal for THIS bathroom is wanting to update it and put in a stand up shower. The one thing that I definitely think could help us is changing the door swing to the bathroom! We could have it open out instead of in.

Good point Zookeeper63!. At the moment we all huddle in to the master bathroom while the kids shower together, and we all have a family teeth brushing session so it feels like we need the two sinks - one parent, one kid to a sink. You point out correctly that that will not likely be the case as they grow older, or if we have guests. The vanity we are choosing would either have two big drawers, or four drawers. I assume that this would be enough storage for extra things - hair dryers, toilet rolls, toothpastes, shampoos etc. But, if we go the single sink route, it gives us room to instead also have a tall cabinet which would add even more storage. In fact, with that, we could skip getting the Godmorgon (medicine cabinet style) mirror cabinets and just use the tall cabinet for storage. Good pointers Zookeeper63. Almost feels obvious but, obviously not! :) Thank you.

Well...here's a rather different idea. It's based on: --small kids who grow to be adolescents; --empty nesters using the house when the kids have left; --attempting to sell the house when it's time to downsize Build two, separate, hall oriented bathrooms, each with a space with two lavatories, and another space with a WC and tub/shower. Don't forget a linen closet for each.