Uncomfortable in the Bathroom

Great news!  We had a meeting with our contractor this morning to discuss a contract and he casually let it slip that he would be finishing up his current project a few weeks early and could probably start our garage mid-September.  It was all I could do not to jump up and do my happy dance right then and there.  Forget getting moved in by Christmas, we could be settling into our new place by Thanksgiving!
This is great news for us, but it means that we have to have decisions made and everything ready to go.  I've been picking out tile, granite and deciding what style doors we want, but I haven't been able to get comfortable with one room- the bathroom.  A few months ago when we acknowledged we had to dump the staircase in favor of a ladder, I came to peace and immediately felt comfortable with the decision.  Using the ladder just seemed to be the right choice and it made me happier about how the space would get used in general.  There's just something about the bathroom layout or design that's just niggling and I can't put a finger on the exact issue.

If you look at the bathroom, you walk in and there's a blank wall directly to your right.  On that wall we're planning to put hooks to hang our towels.  (The thicker wall depth will actually be built-in bookshelves towards the main space.)  There's a weird little jut-in there anyway.  You will face the vanity directly. You can see where there's a shower door drawn, but we'd like to have a shower door.  The toilet is off to the right with a pocket door for privacy (I cannot wait!).  Right behind the door into the room will be a small linen closet.
Seems small but functional, right?  Here are my concerns:
1.  Shower- We are going to have a pretty plain shower.  I love white river stone for the floor and we found a large scale (4"x12") white subway tile that we'll use on the walls.  I really wanted the shower head to be on the exterior wall so that you would face towards that wall when showering.  Codes doesn't allow that because when you turn the shower on, the water would hit you immediately.  It could be costly and weird to separate the shower head from the controls, but I'm assured it can be done if it comes to that.  I just worry that it'll look weird when the shower head and built-in shelves are all on a wall that can't be seen.  Most of what you would see is a plain white box and I have a feeling that'll look awkward.

2.  Vanity- The vanity will be bumped right against the shower door.  This means that we won't be able to use sconces :( and will have to use a bar light above the medicine cabinet instead.  The vanity will be the workhorse of the bathroom, but it also limits the options of what we can do with the shower.  If we want to move the vanity, then we could have more play with the shower.  We haven't measured it yet, but the vanity is assembled and it looks like it would fit on the wall directly to your right as you walk in.  The problem would be that the towels would then go on the exterior wall where the vanity is currently placed.  Your view into the room would be our towels and I'm not sure that it would be a good look, either.

3.  Laundry 'Chute'- A few weeks ago it occurred to me that since our bathroom and laundry area are adjacent, we could fashion an opening into the room that would allow us to drop our dirty clothes directly into the laundry basket on a cart next door, rather than leaving them on the floor.  Scott agrees this would be awesome, but we can't figure out how to make this work design-wise, especially considering it (currently) would also have to work with our towel hooks.

That entire wall on the right is just awkward, regardless of whether it eventually holds towels, the vanity or a laundry chute.  The framing is already up, but what changes would you make to the space to make it feel 'right'?

Getting Floored

Random Fact: The one thing that drives me crazy about winter is always having cold feet.  Way back when I first agreed to the crazy idea of moving my family into a garage, I demanded said that I wanted radiant heating.  Having lived in a McMansion with super-high ceilings that made it difficult to uniformly heat before, Scott immediately agreed.  Since the garage is already built, we have to install the radiant system on top, meaning that we'll need something to cover it.  But what?  Thus began the big debate that lasted for months and has only just been resolved.

When you look at our space, you can see that it doesn't have a ton of windows.  This will help keep the cost down and also help insulate us from the noise around our bustling neighborhood.  Tall ceilings will help, but we will also have to use a light paint color to keep it light and airy feeling.  In images of spaces I love on Pinterest, I've noticed that they all have wood floors.  We love the earthiness this gives to the space and definitely wanted to incorporate them in somehow.  The problem, for anyone looking to install radiant heating, is that radiant heating and wood floors don't get along.  The heating can warm the floors too quickly and the floors lose moisture, making the perfect recipe for cracks.  We weren't really thrilled about the idea of our floors being cracked.

Concrete was another option.  We could lay the radiant system and then pour 1-2 inches of concrete over this.  I loved the idea that no kids or guests or dogs could do anything to hurt the floor.  It's easy to maintain and would stay pretty cool in our hot summers.  When I found out that you could stain concrete to look like wood I was sold.  This was the option I wanted, I'll pass what's behind door #2, thank you very much.  Unfortunately, Scott wasn't down with this idea.  He pointed out how hard concrete is and didn't want anyone falling and getting hurt, or worried that it would be hard on my back as I spend so much time in the kitchen.  When a builder told me that it was a pretty expensive option, I begrudgingly agreed to look at other options.

Scott offered laminate flooring as an option.  Because it's not real hardwood, it's much more flexible and works better with radiant systems.  Unfortunately, we have laminate floors in our current apartment and even though the building is just now one year old, there are already scratches and scuffs in the floor.  It just doesn't wear well and there's no way to fix an individual plank.  I would hate to have company and a child damage the floor and have a friend feeling guilty about it.  It would be kind to our pocketbook, but it just wasn't the right solution for a young family.

We then came to engineered wood.  It had a bit more flexibility than real hardwood with more durability than laminate.  Our suburban house had engineered wood so we knew how it wore and what kind of maintenance it required.  I wasn't in love, but it seemed like the best option for a while.  We told the builder and most of our friends that this is what we would use.

Except then we would have to choose a different material for the bathroom floor.  Wood and bathrooms don't mix, even though Scott was loving that look on some Pinterest boards.  I was having a really difficult time choosing a tile for the main part of the bathroom floor.  When I met with a friend who was good at design she suggested I use tile that looks like wood.  She then showed me some pictures of a friend's house who had done that very same thing in the basement of her house.  I had to admit that it looked really good and tile is the number one conductor of heat for radiant floors.  I was still worried about the wear and tear.  I was afraid that it would chip and then we'd be stuck.  I mentioned this to the builder and he assured me that tile was one of the most durable choices we could make and could be more economical than other choices.  I ran it by Scott and we came to an immediate consensus.

GREAT HEAT TRANSFER+ GREAT AESTHETICS+ DURABILITY= TILE

I wish that choosing the right tile would be easy now that we've decided what to go with.  A recent trip to Lowe's left us more confused than ever.  I liked tiles that had a reddish hue, like this:

I think it'll add warmth to the space.

Scott didn't like that, but preferred a darker tile like this instead:

Please try to imagine it without the light grout, that's just tacky.

As if the color weren't tough enough to choose, there's also lots of texture options like this:

We spent about five minutes perusing all our options before we realized that we were overwhelmed and in over our heads and called it a night.  Honestly, Scott usually has a better eye for design than I do so I would tend to defer to him, but I want to be sure the space doesn't feel cold.  What would you go with and why?  Is there something that we haven't yet considered that we should?