Get a quiet fan and you'll actually use it. :-) They make VERY quiet fans nowadays, you don't have to go deaf to have a dry bathroom. I like the Panasonic Whisper fans, but Broan/Nutone (which some contractors are totally hung up on) has the "Ultra Silent" series too. Fans are rated in "sones" and anything under 1 sone is nice and quiet. My Panasonic Whisper fan is 0.3 sones and I have to stand under the fan and pay attention to it to hear it, which is nice because that way I can run it while I'm soaking in the tub and not feel like someone's running a vacuum cleaner in the room. I plugged your bathroom dimensions into one of the fan size calculators and unless you have a very long duct an 80cfm fan should be sufficient. (I guessed the ceiling as being 10 feet high, figuring if it's vaulted that was a good average because some would be lower and some would be higher.) If you have a long duct run, upsize to a 100-110cfm fan. Oh, and if your duct goes through unheated space, like the attic, using insulated duct will keep moisture from condensing inside the duct and dripping back down into the room. I bought my fan from waveplumbing.com; they had low prices, free shipping, and great customer service. If you don't need a fan/light, they have the 80cfm WhisperCeiling for $96 or the 110cfm for $108. The WhisperLites are $139 for the 80cfm and $149 for the 110cfm. BTW, in addition to the beadboard I also have some rather pricey (although I used it very economically) handprinted wallpaper in the bathroom. No lifting, no wrinkling, no smearing, because we use our fan religiously. I have it on a pushbutton timer switch (made by Leviton, available in any electrical supply store) so we don't have to remember to turn it off.

Thanks for the feedback and ideas. The varnish idea is intriguing; I think I've seen similar applications and they end up looking very shiny and not a match for the paint. This is not so terrible, but would be a bit of a different look. Are there any varnish-type products which would have a more neutral finish? Also do you think I'd need to varnish the ceiling as well to protect from condensation, or only on the walls which would be receiving direct 'splashes'? We are leaning towards keeping the tub, and retrofitting it with a shower. The idea of a hand-held European-style shower is very appealing; we're wondering if maybe a ceiling-mounted curtain ring would be sufficient to prevent splashes if the shower hardware were somehow mounted inside the curtain, maybe from a bar mounted to the ceiling? We did something similar to a clawfoot tub in our previous house - link added to show what that may look like. It would be a tricky install since the curtain ring would probably need to be mounted at the same angle as the slope of the ceiling. We would probably just leave the current tub faucet set in place and add another faucet set that operates just the shower. There's not really an economical way to create space for a separate shower, changing the footprint of the room is off-the-table for us at this point. Here is a link that might be useful: clawfoot shower system

BM now sells it's original oil-based alykd (in a petroleum oil base), a water-clean-up alkyd (in a mineral oil base), and latex paint. They tell me that the water-clean-up alkyd is almost as good as the oil-based alkyd but I'm skeptical, so I went with the original oil base when I painted the inside of my exterior doors recently. The original oil base is supposedly going to be phased out (it already has been modified so much to eliminate VOCs that it isn't nearly as strong as the oil paints were "back in the day"). The water-based alkyds will remain available. This info is all per the owner of my local BM store and current as of 2 weeks ago when I bought my paint. As far as painting latex over oil goes, you CAN do it, but you need to prep well and use a bonding primer. I've been doing it (my whole house was oil based on the trim) for a couple years now by washing the oil paint on the trim to remove the dirt/grime, painting one coat of a bonding primer like Zinsser 123, and then painting 2 coats of latex topcoat. It's been fine. If you put latex directly on top of oil with no primer, it won't stick. The PO's did that in a couple of the bedrooms here, and I was able to literally PULL most of their paint off with my hands (I had to use a scraper in a couple spots, but for the most part, it came off in big sheets!) to get back down to the oil paint, which I then primed and recoated with latex. Yeah, that wasn't fun. So if you're gonna put latex over oil (or even the waterbased alkyds over oil), I'd definitely spend the time doing a coat of bonding primer -- better safe than sorry.

I have a bathroom at my lakehouse that is even smaller and it has beadboard from floor to and including ceiling. It's the original and 125 years old. We have the original tub and sink and it works so well. The fact that it is all the same makes it appear bigger. If you plan to put the beadboard on part of the wall I would say the lower half is the way to go, not halfway as it will cut the room to the viewers eye but about a foot higher. I think I would just paint above that since its a small bathroom and steam may impact the wallpaper.