Bathroom wishes

When it comes to bathrooms, I have the unfortunate problem of having champagne taste on a beer budget. I drool over high-end fixtures and fittings from places like Waterworks and I gravitate towards ridiculously expensive tile and lighting. I'm good about making low-cost items work throughout the house, but the bathroom is one room where it's hard to make cheap look chic.

Hopefully, our master bathroom will get remodeled in the next year or two...but I don't want to undertake the project until we can afford to achieve an overall look and feel like this:

One major step in the remodel would be knocking down the wall between the bathroom and the walk-in closet, in order to conjoin the two and make better use of the total space. I adore the wardrobe style cabinetry in the below photo and would like to translate it in our room.

Source unknown

I'm also wanting to work the washer and dryer into the plans...I love the idea of minimizing the distance that laundry has to be lugged around. To blend in, they would be hidden by custom cabinets and topped with a nice, big counter for folding and sorting clothes.

Here's the current state of our bathroom. You may be thinking that it's not that bad, and it's really not. The layout is just not functional and the bath/closet space is completely underutilized. Also, the fittings, fixtures, and tile are all very tired, which is hard to see in the photos.

Finally, here's what it looked like before we moved in and subsequently took a paint roller to the area. I typically like striped walls, but this look just wasn't doing the trick for me!