Wooo!!! Cat, I am stuck at home because of the snow storm so wandered around here not looking at anything in particular and came upon your thread. I totally agree with you on the shower curtain choice. Regardless of whether I have the money to spare or not, keeping those suckers clean is a nuisance over time. We have a glass shower door that was installed back in 2003 and I can't tell you how much I hate cleaning it. Not that the door is all that dirty, but a shower curtain is way easier, and you can change the look/style whenever you feel like it. Can't do that with a pricey shower door. Anyway, everything looks lovely as usual, including the "prom" dress :-) Love, love those circular tiles, and the floor tiles that look like fabric. Gorgeous. What colour is that again? It looks greyish on my monitor.

wowed, I agree with your response, and it's interesting to me. I would want at least sound, if not visual, separation, between a lavatory/dressing area and a bedroom. It's interesting to compare the bedroom/lavatory area/toilet and bath area layers to a palace set up: the anteroom, the throne room (no pun intended) and then private quarters. In the same way, access and function are layered. I think most users would agree this sort of layering is a good thing. Contrast this to the evolution of design of the kitchen/dining/family room area of a house. For me, sound separation of activities (eg., tv watching vs. a conversation in a dining room, or relaxing in the family room without the din of dish stacking) or visual separation (chatting with guests in the dining room while not worrying about how the busy food prep area looks) or even olfactory separation (reading a book in the family room while onions are sliced and sauteed in the kitchen). The grand, open flowing floorplan for these areas is popular, but for me, I prefer a little segregation, especially as the number of users and potential simultaneous uses goes up. Seems to me, as the average household size has shrunk and more people are living in a house of only 2 or 3 people, sure, the open floor plan can work. But for now at least, I want a little bit of separation of activities, and I like my "antiquated" floor plan, with separate kitchen, dining room, family room (tv) and living room (piano). A tv and piano in the same room would be a nuisance for us. So I guess on a more micro level, I'm looking to separate activities in the bathroom. But I agree, if in the process of pulling them apart and relocating them, I mix grooming and sleeping, well, yes, that would be a disastrous unintended consequence! responding to another post, I don't know why that link didn't work, here is the direct url: http://www.farrow-ball.com/Company/FBStyles.aspx?language=en-GB&style=5

greg_2015, I'm really glad you got back to me on this. I'm not a plumber (obviously) but figured there had to be a different place where the plumbing is vented. But since I'm in a condo building and on the top floor, I did not want to take a chance and simply go ahead and cap the pipe. I even went as far as to consider that maybe the sink bowl holes are the vents, especially when I saw the black holes in the black pipe (see photo in my first post). After I got your response I went onto my deck, which gives me a clear view of the roof, and indeed saw what I consider to be the vent stack. By examining its location and the location of my kitchen and bathroom sinks, I could clearly see that the vent stack it right above the sinks. The photo below is of the vent stack. While standing on my deck I can touch the edge of the pitched roof with my hand. In fact, just below the photo is my deck door which leads into my kitchen. So the distance between the stack and me, from where I took the photo, is quite close. And here's a photo of the bathroom sink pipe after I capped it: By the way, something strange has happened. My kitchen sink clog seems to have gone away! This may have happened before I even capped the bathroom sink pipe. After I capped the bathroom sink I ran water down my kitchen sink which is on the other side of the wall from my bathroom sink. I was expecting to see the water back up into the kitchen sink. But no, the water kept draining away. Is it normal for some sink clogs to go away on their own after a number of days or weeks?

IKEA is your solution. They specialize in pieces that will fit in tiny spaces (think European apartments). They also have special sink tops that fit on their vanities, all at a very reasonable price. Obviously, it's cheaper if you can go there yourself, but they do deliver too. You can get the 24" solid wood Hemnes with a sink top for $250. It has built-in, very useful, storage drawers that hold a ton. We have one of these in our basement bathroom and just installed three of the larger ones in other bathrooms. Drawers are much more useful than just two doors that open; I know because I've had both.