Six feet should be okay if it is a conventional showerhead and not one of those powerful bodysprays. Even with the showerhead tilted all the way up the spray barely reaches the back of my conventional 3 wall alcove, 5' tub. It is not typically done this way in the US, although when I was in England the showerhead always faced the opening, and you did get water on the floor...

Thanks for your help Snidely. The basement is cold all year long (even in the back to back over 100 degree days we've had this week), but the main level and upper floor is comfortable in the winter and not terrible in the summer, just somewhat warmer. However, the vent in my basement office does not seem to have any heat coming out of it, the contractor who finished the basement admitted a problem, but never came back to fix it, I suppose we will need to hire someone else to fix that issue. The rest of the basement is slightly cooler in winter than the rest of the house but not dramatically so. How about a whole house fan? We had one in our last house which was much bigger than this house and had the opposite problem in a way, each floor was very closed off. I didn't want one here because the area we should install it in is visible from the front door, and they are not attractive. However, in the last house I would open the basement door and turn the attic fan on to pull the cool air up. This house is about 750 ft in the basement, 1200 on the main floor and 1200 on the upper level.

First of all, you may wish to take the second link down as it shows not only pictures of the house but others you may consider more personal. The fastest fix is to make your whole album private, and deal with getting the pics separated into a public album later if you can't do it right away. Now as to the utility bills: I believe you are in upstate NY right? Last winter (2011-2012) was extremely, freakishly mild. I am somewhat north of Albany and last winter we used only about 55-60% of the fuel we normally use. Also for the fuels that most people use (except for home heating oil) prices were affected by the mild winter as well, with both electricity and gas (natural and propane) being unusually low, so the dollar amounts on the bills may be lower than normal for the same amount of power in other years. (Residential electricity is returning to norms -i.e. rising - now.) So those factors may be the reason that the previous years' bills were not forthcoming, as the sellers may be reluctant to let you see the normal costs. Or not; they simply may have already discarded their bills in prepartion for moving- though they can probably request duplicates if pressed hard enough. And even if you can't get the bills you may be able to get info about comparative heating degree days between last winter's mildness and normal, and more typical rates and work the numbers out for yourselves. Anyway I would assume that last January's $320 cost would normally be in the mid/high $400's to low $500-ish range in years when temperatures and prices are closer to norms. Amendments or improvements to storm windows will improve your comfort but probably not make the house temps warmer, unless you are talking about solid (opaque)covers like blinds or well-fitted insulating curtains. Certain types of insulation projects may help depending on what you find there. But it may already be maxed out for space possible. The bills don't seem excessive to me if they include all of the lighting, water heating, heat, and in summer, A/C. (I have no A/C so I may be wrong about that.) We heat entirely with solid fuel (wood), but our power bills for hot water, lights and small amount of electric space heatng in Jan-March are about $250-350/mo during the coldest months. We use lectricty to heat H/W for the washing machines, but rarely use any for drying as I hang out 12 months of the year. Mostly I cook with propane, with a small amoaunt of electricity for MW and induction. I don't use a DW. HTH L.

Here is an attempt at drawing this in. Is there a standard door width? Some quick searching looked like 28"? Is 24" more appropriate or would you go with 28"? The bench has to go under the main showered due to the configuration. Blue oval is main showered, blue circle on right wall is hand shower, and the gray oval is the control. I drew the door off center so that I could put a small wall to the right of it as chartist suggested. If we do a 28" door it looks like we have 11" between the two doors. Also for shampoo shelves/niches, I was thinking we could put a few diagonal shelves on that tiny wall behind the door (so you can't see the clutter from most of the room), or else we could do a niche in the wall abutting the tub but then it would be a bit low down (saw a few of these on houzz)...actually on second thought our wall would be even lower since it's a tub wall and not a toilet wall.