My dream is a shower stall plus a deep Japanese soaking tub side by side, like this: http://cdn.homedit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/wooden-bathroom-furniture-steps-to-tub.jpg
Regular American bathtubs fucking suck for taking a relaxing bath and make showering more annoying.
I’ve lived in my current apartment, which has 3 bathrooms each with a shower and no bathtub. for the past 24 years, so I guess a tub is not very important to me.
Even when I lived in a place with a tub I rarely took baths, maybe two or three times a year. They would mainly be super hot to ease muscle pain when I had been hiking or doing very strenuous work.
One of my showers has an enclosed tile lower part that can be filled up though it’s not really a tub. Two or three times I’ve used it as a tub if I wanted to soak in hot water, but it’s not really a good place to stretch out.
I wouldn’t mind having a whirlpool bath but that’s for relaxing rather than getting clean.
It’s always nice for resale to have both, but I always like to have a nice sized shower, since I’m going to use it every day and I’m a big guy. I would say 42" x 48" minimum, and with a bench. In the 80s, people were into huge tubs leaving room for only tiny showers. That’s not for me.
I’ve got an arthritic left hip and it’s getting increasingly difficult to climb into my shower/tub to get clean. If I ever get enough money saved up, I’m going to remodel my bathroom and replace the tub with a large walk in shower.
ooh. I *like *this idea. I hate where my w/d are currently, and I’d regain a closet if I were able to move them.
My brother’s house is a little Cape Cod that only had one bathroom. About ten years ago, he added a second bathroom upstairs, where the kids have their bedrooms. He put in a shower stall, but it’s a prefab unit that takes up the same space as a standard bathtub, so if a later owner decides they want a tub, it could be added later.
I haven’t had a bath in over 20 years. I much prefer a decent sized shower recess.
My last bath was one of these. More trouble than it was worth.
I can top you, jabiru. My last bath was 39 years ago. My doctor told me if I wanted to stop having constant bladder infections I should stop taking baths, so I did. It worked.
Somewhere between 2 and 3. I’d really rather have a tub somewhere, but I could see other concerns overriding it. I do know that I was able to take a sort of bath in college and at my grandma’s house, where both had walkin showers. There’s at least enough space to sit and let the water run on you.
I mean, to me, that’s the main part of the bath. Having water on you and being able to relax and not stand. Actual submersion is not entirely required, even if it waste less water. (In college, obviously, I didn’t care, since the water bill was part of tuition and fixed. At grandma’s, I made sure not to take any longer than I would for a long-ish shower. Water is fairly cheap around here–still never getting over around $60 a month with even hour-long showers.)
I would prefer to have my bath other than in the toilet-and-washing room.
Wash the filth off before bathing.
There are many ways to arrange outdoor or open spaces for privacy.
I wouldn’t care, as long as there is a tub in the house. Sometimes you just want to take a bath. The house I’m currently living in doesn’t have a master bath, Just a shared bathroom on the first floor for the three bedrooms with a shower/tub combo, and a shower stall in the basement.
Well, who wants to buy a house and immediately redo the bathroom?
I think it really depends on what the local market expects. If you look at places on the online real estate sites, what do their master bathrooms have? If most have a tub, keep the tub.
I said “turnoff but not dealbreaker” - if the house was otherwise great, I could live with it especially if the shower was a decent size. But we actually didn’t buy one house partly because the “master bath” was TINY - like, the vanity was a single sink with no extra counter space or storage, the toilet was right next to it, the tub next to that - you could hardly turn around without banging your elbows on something. That house was odd in several ways - huge bedrooms, tiny master bath, a furnace room that you could get into if you were skinny and turned sideways…
I admit, we have a big tub in the master bathroom that I use maybe 2-3 times a year - usually when I’m not feeling good. We also have a shower that my husband and I use almost daily. I would really miss the tub, however.
In our current house the kids’ bathroom does have a tub - but it is, surprisingly, SMALLER than standard. I’d have a hard time soaking in that one.
Re cleaning the tub after each bath: A quick rinse at most should be all that’s required after each bath unless you’re using a lot of foofy bubbles / oils / whatever.
Of course you could also go high-end with a huge shower stall and that might well appeal to people - especially if it were a lip-less one that you could get into w/o lifting your feet (ideal if some day the occupant needs an accessible bathroom). My in-laws had a place that had a “Roman Shower” or something - the shower area was set off from the rest of the room with just a shoulder-high wall.
I’ve had maybe 3 tub baths in the 35+ years we’ve lived here. Give me a good walk-in shower and I’ll be totally happy with it.
Baths are nice to take but when you get older it can hard to get in and out of. When I was a health aide some of my clients used their bathtubs to store things and only took sponge baths and wash their hair in the kitchen sink . I miss not being able to take a bath safely.
Oh hell yes! I lived in a place that had only a tub years ago, and that was a real PITA to not be able to hop in the shower for a quick scrub.
Then I lived in Japan for a year where we had only a Japanese style tub. That was not so bad because I would heat up the water in the tub (which didn’t take long) and sit beside the tub and wash off with a bucket, dipping hot water from the tub. The whole (small) bathroom was tiled, with a floor drain and pallets, so it was really not much different than taking a shower. And when I wanted to soak in the tub, it was a nice deep Japanese style tub that you can immerse in right up to your chin.
The house I’ve owned for the last 15 years has only a shower in the bath off the master bedroom. There is a shower/tub combination in the second full bathroom, but I think I’ve only used it once since I’ve lived here. IMHO, a nice long hot shower is more relaxing than a bath. If we ever remodel the master bath, though, I’d like to have a Japanese style tub.
We lived 18 or so years in a house with a shower only master bath. There was a tub in the hall bath that the kids shared. The ONLY times I’ve taken a bath in the past 30+ years were when I had casts or stitches that made showering an issue, and an ice soak after running a marathon. My wife might take a couple of baths a year, so she’s fine so long as there is a tub somewhere in the house. I would bet a lot of people would be OK with a tub not in the master - tho that might not work if they were having to share it with a bunch of teens or something.
We moved a couple of years ago, and redid the bathrooms. Actually, we chose not to have a master bath, even though we could have arranged things to have an opening off the bedroom instead of the hall. Since it is just us, walking a few feet down the hall doesn’t matter to us. We added space to the larger of the 2 upstairs bathrooms, by giving up one of 2 closets in the adjoining bedroom. We used that space for a nice walk-in shower. However, we also put a deep (not oversized) tub in that bath, just so there would be one tub in the house. Just in case we ever had the need/desire for a tub, or if we were bathing a grandchild or something. We really aren’t too concerned about maximizing resale - certainly not willing to give up something we like in the hopes of gaining $ on resale. We’re planning on being carried from this house in a pair of caskets. Or - if we become infirm or something - our overall financial situation is such that resale value of this house won’t affect paying for our end-of-life care/housing.
BUT - if you think it likely that you might be selling - if your job might change, you have kids who will move out, whatever - you might want to seriously consider a tub. You might be able to do what we did - if your current tub is way oversized, you could enlarge the shower by replacing the big tub with a normal sized tub. (Whatever you do, tho, don’t put in one of those weird shaped mutant tubs you sometimes see - that are an immediate turnoff.) Even tho YOU may not want a tub, when reselling, you don’t want to do anything that will definitely turn off a significant portion of potential buyers. Even if only 10% of people would demand a tub (and I bet it is higher), why would you want to immediately turn off 10% of potential buyers from even considering your home?
Yep.
