My grandma eats sweets including homemade pies with 1-2 c sugar per pie, loves sweets in general, eats too many fried foods for my taste, doesn’t eat paint chips, bathes in a porcelain tub, and was JUST moved to a nursing facility this year since she’s losing her mobility (mind is still intact) and in another month she will be celebrating her 100th birthday. You don’t have to live in a bubble to live a long life. Much of your life expectancy is predetermined in large part by genetics. Use common sense and don’t lick the bathtub.

Well, phooey. I taped it out in the bathroom with blue tape last night and it looked like it would fit, but with too many nos, I'm back to the drawing board. Interesting thought, Vix. Right now we don't actually have a toilet room, so much as a separate toilet "area" (there's no door, and the closet takes up too much room to add a door), but it's on my agenda to create one. In our house, it's very necessary. I generally use that bathroom to try to FIND privacy, only to have 3 people (and sometimes the dog) follow me into the bathroom. I'm looking forward to having a door that locks and a fan so that I don't have two little people handing me the TP and asking whether I'm doing number 1 or 2 (oh, and the 1 year old likes to flush while I'm ON the pot; so I've got my own special cold water washlet), while DH decides that he absolutely has to shave and brush his teeth at that exact moment. Now if I take a hike to the guest bath on the other side of the house, all three just follow me AGAIN. Sometimes when I have insisted on locking the door in the guest bath (no way to do that with our LOUVERED -- why??? -- pocket door in the master), my one year old plopped down prostrate outside the door and cried until I open the door. For my W/C, I want to put in a LOUD fan; no whisper quiet for me. Maybe I'll even add a radio. :) The way I'm seeing it, I can either get rid of the long vanity altogether and live with a fairly small vanity, plus a tub and shower, I can skip the tub and live with the kids' bathroom on the third level as the only room with a tub, or we can bump out that weird corner jog, which would give us an additional 49'' X 27'' space -- enough to fit a 5X3 tub, 5X3 shower and keep the two vanities. But that sounds very expensive and will require carefully removing and replacing the siding to match the existing. DH's response to all this was "why do we need a tub?"

In one of our kids baths, we put the tub faucet/shower head on the toilet end, and on the other, we put it on the opposite end. We had intended to do it on the opposite end for both tubs, but that detail got screwed up on one of the tubs. Anyway, I don't think it's a huge deal, but I prefer the set up where the tub faucet/shower head is on the opposite end of the tub. We have young children that we bathe in the tub, and when I give them a bath, I kneel on the floor to fill the tub, check the temp, drain the tub, and also bathe the kid. So, I like that I don't have to hug the toilet in doing all that. I can be on the opposite end of the toilet instead of sitting on the toilet or crouched in between the toilet and controls. My older kids use the other set up, which makes less of a difference when you are just turning on the shower. Of all the small things I fretted about, this was one of the more minor things, but if I could pick, I'd go with faucet/showerhead opposite toilet.

"I have a widespread faucet with cross handles. The were installed by a previous owner to turn as if they were levers. I'm a right-tight, left-loose kind of guy so it always made me crazy to turn the cold handle the "wrong" way. " I had this problem as well - it arose because the faucets could be ordered with lever or cross handles, but the valves were the same either way (and not reversible). I had to order an additional one of the cold valve (or hot, forget which) to get them to turn correctly. These were Grohe, so not cheap (although perhaps Chinese now).