Are you going to have a standardd shower head too? Because the benefits of having both are great. First, it's just the two of us as well and we still had the slide bar secured so it could double as a grab bar. You know just in case there's ever a slip. Then we also wanted the advantage of being able to adjust the height of the hand held. As it turns out, we can use both the slider & the shower head at the same time and boy is that wonderful! Basically with the slider you have more options for height and a secured slider can be a safety feature. Even if you don't need it now, for resale, that's a plus. I think for us it was one of those things where if you don't know you won't miss it, we did it for practical reasons more than anything else, then once it was in, we saw how great it is and were tickled pink.

Your shower configuration is similar to ours except that we don't have a fixed shower head. We have the slide bar between the door and the control. Since the door swings both ways, we open it out, reach in, direct the hand-held shower head towards the back wall, and turn on the water. That way we don't have to get wet until the water has warmed up. You are not obsessing about this. It is certainly better to decide what works best for you before it's too late.

Found this thread because we are being irritated by our sliding screen doors installed on the inside of our newly constructed home. Like others, I had never seen this and was going to complain to the contractor that they installed them backwards. Apparently not. But the screens inside are just plain stupid. You have to open them to grab and close the glass outer doors, which is inconvenient and also lets the bugs in while you do it. If you have the screens only partially open, there is a large gap left between the glass slider panels and the screen panels that mosquitoes and flies can fly right through. So the glass panels have to be 100% open (and perfectly aligned with the screen door panels) to avoid any gap. What if I only want to have a little air on a cool morning, and not have to open the doors all the way??? I tried leaving the glass doors partially open last night (screen doors completely closed, but again, there’s that gap); guess what??? I have mosquito bites all over my FACE this morning. We live in Baja Mexico so both hurricanes and bugs (especially mosquitoes) are an issue, but I think the clear choice is put the screen doors on the OUTSIDE. Hurricane protection is dealt with in other ways that would also protect the screens! And BTW I also grew up in Hawaii and have never, ever seen screen doors installed on the inside of sliding doors. It’s incredibly stupid.

I hate my sliding door. The tracks are impossible to keep clean, and I have hit my feet so many times on the bottom track. My doors also have a metal frame around them which I also hate because dirt or mold gets trapped between the glass and the frame and it is impossible to get it out. Go with the hinged frameless door. Just make sure that there is a seal on the bottom and the sides so that water doesn't leak out. I have seen OVE Doors at Lowe's. They look nice and are about $600.00. They aren't cheap, but they look like decent doors that don't cost a fortune either. Take your time and find the right door for you and your wife. They don't have to cost a fortune but can still be nice. Good luck.