Thanks for the nice compliments, Snowyshasta and organic-donna. We absolutely love our bathroom, now that we've been using it for a few months. We also saw this design and "borrowed'' it. Actually we saw a bathroom in a showroom, and immediately knew it was what we wanted -- the colors, the look, the fixtures. It wasn't too feminine, or too masculine, but just right for a his and her bath. I just asked my DH what he liked best about the bath (he's sitting here watching basketball), and he said the shower. It is equipped with three heads -- a handheld, a stationary one and a rain head. "It's like being in a spa,'' he said. I love all the storage. As you can see it's not a huge room, but we created a serene space for the both of us, with every nice feature we wanted, and with enough storage for all my girlie things away from our three teenage daughters, and our collection of nice towels. My husband loves having his own space too. His, of course, is not as packed as mine, but we actually still have some half empty drawers and shelves. The tower is so handy. Our cabinet maker tried to talk me into making the glass doors on that tower a frosted glass, but I insisted on clear glass, and I'm glad. Doesn't look great in the picture, but I love that I can see everything in there. You can always hide things -- like first aid medicines -- in pretty baskets and still keep them there. We love the radiant floor heating, and we especially love the Robern medicine cabinets, which have mirrors inside the doors and even along the back of them. Love, love love our new bath. It was costly, and like you, Organic-donna, we worry about money, especially with the economy being as it is. But we think we were smart shoppers about everything we bougtht, and know that if we ever want to sell our house (but we have no such plans), we'll get our money back. We built it for us, and every single day I am grateful for this pretty bath and have no regrets that we did this. Besides, I grew up in family of nine -- and we all shared one bath! I'm done with sharing.

Hi Cat-Mom, Yup, we're also renoing Living Room and Master Bedroom at the same time- you? :>) I just faux-painted our entry stair railing to make do until we add on to our front entry. So many balls in the air, hard to juggle it all at one time. kgwlisa, That's what I had thought of so far, basement ceiling has been ripped down, so all the plumbing is fully exposed, and present shower and bath have leaking problems, so things pretty well have to be redone anyways. I was even contemplating 'borrowing' more out of the common wall when we build it, by building in storage behind mirror and perhaps a deeper vanity. I'm assuming this is a fairly basic/common plan, and hopefully others have paved the path... Rae

Mike_home, boilers, furnaces and heat pumps that have variable outputs have sweet spots for efficiency. The sweet spot is NOT at 100% output. At the highest output, the efficiency can be significantly lower. Heat exchanger capacity can approach saturation because air/fluid fluid flow is limiting. (You tell me, can higher operating pressures might increase causing compressor inefficiency?) There are a number of potential causes. I suspect that HX capacity is the root of most of this. Ask yourself what happens to efficiency if you double or triple the size of the indoor and outdoor HXs of a typical heat pump? Fan speeds can decrease with the ECM motors and efficiency will still be higher than at 100%. That will happen with a condensing boiler as well. As firing rate goes up, the the counterflow HX gets hotter, even on the "cool" end eventually limiting the condensing ability. As home envelope efficiency increases, set backs save less energy. At the same time, if the set backs decrease the efficiency of heating or cooling equipment, you end up in a poorer place especially if the equipment is sized very closely to the most demanding requirements. I have a couple of more global comments. First, If the controls are up to the job, set-back recovery could be efficient solving the problem by limiting output to that sweeter place. (Reserving full output to times when it is required by climactic conditions, power failures and the like.) Some residential modulating boilers can do that and in more than one approach. I dunno about furnaces. I've not seen it for VS heat pumps. That situation is somewhat analogous to the early days of heat pumps when there was a no set-back rule. The solution is a little more complicated than one-speed with heat strips, but not excessive given the development and price of microprocessors. I believe that it is being approached at the residential level. It already has been done at the commercial/institutional level. Second, meaningful official efficiency rating of variable speed equipment is at a very primitive state. Unless I've missed something, it does not exist. Some offer information for the engineer types. . (It is a lot of information!) Even if that information is available, it is difficult to apply to individual homes and climates because it requires a lot of calculations.

I'm with Enduring in that I would prefer the space given to the closet instead of the toilet. In the last house, the toilet in the master was crammed into a tiny space shared with a tub/shower combo. Really, really disliked the space. Would traipse down the hall and use the other toilet. (I used the shower in the master only one time in all of the seven years that we lived in that house.) Also, I would not put a tub in but that may be just me. (The house already has one tub.) I would much rather clean a shower once every six weeks or so (we squeegee after a shower) than have to clean the tub (bent over and on your knees) every single time it is used. Tubs use a lot of water vs the lo-flo shower heads. But, if you love tub baths and routinely use a tub to bathe, that's another story and you'll want to include it in the remodel. (If you're thinking a cast iron tub, the floor framing will probably need to be beefed up.) Not a huge deal since the ceiling below will likely be torn out anyway for the plbg. changes. The other thing I see as a problem is the door opening directly in front of the vanity. That is going to be a pain if this is a shared bath and someone else is standing in front of the vanity.