I know you will love the Carrara. It is so beautiful and you really got a bargain with the vanity top. Local tile folks say that if you just keep the marble sealed that it will resist stains. They said that they have a marble tile sealer which lasts for 15 years. But, I had a bad marble experience. I have a shiny black marble dining table which was etched with OJ. I had to have it professionally buffed out which was expensive. I now have a glass over the black marble top so this won't happen again. Hence, my reluctance to deal with marble. But the white marble may not as hard to maintain as the shiny black marble. Here is the info on my materials. I'm in NC and I found the tile at Best Tile. They have multiple stores on the east coast, but I'm not sure the same company is in CA. The spotted quartz countertop is called Fusion from HanStone which came from another company. It has depth without having a lot of vein movement to compete with the marble. I'll be glad to post pictures when my master bath is done. However, I know it will be a slow process for me. I want to pick out as much as I can ahead of time so all of the materials will be in to keep the project on time once the demolition starts. Next week I will start to work on faucets, lighting, and mirrors while I watch for a vanity seat. Enjoy your new surroundings! I know that you will enjoy your choices every day for a long time!

It's smart to think of how you may use your home over time, and to try and keep spaces flexible. But overemphasizing the concept of aging in place is like adding an additional 500 sq ft and $200k for a fancy butler's pantry, guest powder room, second oven, and formal dining room so you can host Thanksgiving every other year for eight years. It has emotional appeal, but it probably isn't a smart choice, based on cold, hard economics. It is very hard to predict how long you will stay in your home, and equally hard to predict what frailties you may or may not face in the future. You can take a lot of people out to a lot of four star restaurant meals (in limos!) for much, much less than that formal dining room. And you can hire someone to do laundry for a lot less than the cost of building a first floor laundry room to get it out of the basement. That said, curbless showers look nicer. I would consider one on the basis of its appeal to me as a healthy adult. The house I am in now had one when I moved in, and it was used by a 90 year-old. Turned out they achieved it by retrofitting the existing shower with a three-sided shower pan. I don't recommend that approach. They were jerks, because they intentionally hid the issue with a LOT of caulk. But there are all kinds of ways you can creatively adapt when the time comes.

you can diy or buy all kinds of privacy screens, including wrapping fabric around like a snail shell so it has to go aways before they see anything. a bench to put things on and you can have anywhere. i mean your neighbors don't walk through your yard and walk in do they? if so, i would not have one. not til i moved from those neighbors.

How cool is that?! First things first, how do you get those critters (what kind of critters are we talking about, btw?) out of the shower?? To get relief from the sun while preserving your view of the shower, you can block it before it gets to the door wall via some sort of shade over the outdoor shower (e.g. a retractable awning or teak pergola with either stationary or movable slats). The other way, of course, is to block the sun at the door wall via solar shades, teak shutters, window tint, etc. Since airflow is critical (I assume there's no air conditioning). I would think you need as much of that wall to be able to "breathe" as possible so tilting windows with screens would be a good thing. You could have awning or hopper windows set in a transom across the entire wall, with a door and two side windows below that tilt in or out (all framed using teak, of course, and stainless steel hardware).