Hi again Kathleen. Just wondering what is presently dividing your shower recess and toilet? Found the attached photo which may help throw a different perspective - forget a wall. The worst of the splash will be in the alcove and if you have the shower rose on a rail, this does minimise splashing, as you could turn it away from the toilet. The rose is also height adjustable to also reduce splash. I would still put a glass door at the end of the solid wall though, to divide the two areas, create some privacy and it will make the shower cosier in winter. You say you have retired and appear to be looking at this as your forever home, then this would give you good options if the worst happened and one of you became partially immobile. It creates a large area for a shower chair to be used and room for a carer to assist. Horrible thought I know, but sadly one doesn't know what the future will bring. Will even make toilet access easier - down the track you may even need to fit a commode over the toilet. There are taller toilets now too, great for wonky knees. The only issue would be keeping toilet paper dry, but I think the alcove will assist with that. The more open area will also make cleaning a lot easier. With respect to a wall hung vanity, they are lovely, but they are also more expensive to install and I don't know how easy it would be on a cement wall. Putting the bowl on top of the bench space, does give you more drawer space, a recessed bowl will take up most of the top drawer. There are many different sized bowels these days, so it is easy to keep it to a basic size to give you vanity bench space or alternatively, you can generally off-set the bowl to create a larger space on one side. With respect to the bench top - I think any shiny surface needs constant care to keep it looking great, it all shows water marks and spills, but with just the two of you, it should not be difficult to wipe it after each use. I keep an absorbent cloth beside my vanity for this purpose and there is never any BIG clean. I have to laugh at the black vanity top - one of my joeys had black marble on her kitchen bench that was flecked with gold. I never got used to it - I was always "cleaning" the "crumbs" off the bench top. You can also use a painted glass for a bench top if you really like the reflective look of glass - similar to what is used for kitchen splashbacks now. With the age of your unit and the concrete walls, I think I would be inclined to leave the door where it is, you would have no idea what could be in that wall. You could however, simply remove the door to open the vanity area to the hallway and then put a towel rail on the wall beside the vanity. I agree with Pazz on a corner storage unit if you need storage, it won't intrude at all into the area, anything else could be a nuisance. [houzz=]

You need to buy a bidet toilet seat. We have had a Conway BA 13 which was very expensive at $1600 or morr but in our next house bought a Quoss for $500 which does the trick. Great for my elderly mother who lives with us but now I love it too.

we have two in-wall toilet cisterns, one built into a tiled wall backing onto the tiled shower recess and the other built in under an extension to a vanity...so far no problems but they're only four years old and were only new on the market when we bought ours ...the manufacturers' website had detailed structural diagrams and installation instructions and you'll see that the tank is sealed from any foreign objects (including toilet cleaners and inquisitive children) and one model has a cover plate with the flush buttons that can be removed and is wide enough for access and the other has the flush buttons directly on the tiled wall...they are surprisingly basic for the extraordinary price compared to a standard toilet cistern but, combined with the wall hung toilet, we also think they look great but we made sure to keep an extra metre of wall tiles "just in case"....another options we considered was a remote cistern mounted in the roof space with the water delivered by a pipe in the wall..... hopefully since we installed ours any faults have been identified and resolved and the latest models will be even better

No personal experience with these systems but I know they do make special acoustic rated gyprock style wall boards for this kind of situation. And acoustic paint coatings too of some sort. Would they help?