Clumsy, my patuty!! WOW!! Where do you live??? Can I come out and tile your bathroom??? :-) In all seriousness, that's going to be one sweet masterpiece to put together! Before I get to your questions, though I do see one problem. It's going to be tough to run the chair rail through the shower and have any kind of glass enclosure. Not impossible, but tough. You would have to work together with your glass guy to figure out EXACTLY where the glass would go, so you could leave notches in the chair rail. I can guarantee you-- they're not going to notch the glass for you. :-) Now, on to the questions: #1-6) What you have drawn is excellent. With reference to the subway tile, no, the corner pieces do not need to be mitered. What you can do is cut the pieces, but then turn the cut edge into the field, and use the "factory" edge as the bullnose. Now, I said they don't NEED to be mitered. However, if you'd PREFER to miter them, there's no reason why you couldn't. It's not like it's ceramic where you'd have to worry about a sharp edge. As for the chair rail and liner, you're right. Those WOULD have to be mitered. The biggest tip I could give you about mitering the chair rail would be to have a piece of 2x4 handy with a 45 degree mitered end on it. You can place the mitered side of the 2x4 against the wet saw tray table's edge, and that'll give you the correct angle, and the thickness of the 2x4 will give you something to make sure you're standing the chair rail up straight while you cut it. If you decide that you want to miter all the outside corner tiles, the only advice I can give you is leave a little "meat" on the edge. You don't want to take the miter all the way to the face of the tile. If you do, you'll end up with an extremely ragged edge. Leave 1/16" of meat or so on the front edge. The finished miter will still look just as tight, and it'll be 100% stronger. #7) Don't worry about continuing the cuts. Atleast not on the subway tiles. For the most part, the ONLY time you really need to worry about it is when you use a diagonal layout. With running bond (the brick joint pattern), there's no need to continue it. Take each wall individually. Now, the best thing is to center the walls. However, sometimes that gives you small pieces on each end. With a square layout, moving the layout over half a tile, so the tile is centered instead of the grout joint, the problem is solved. With running bond, if you move it over half a tile, it puts you right back where you started!! So how do you move the layout over and still keep it centered? Move it over a QUARTER of a tile (1 1/2"). What this does is it'll give you equal, but alternating cuts. Lay it out on paper and try it-- You'll see what I mean. #8) Yes, that's normal. #9) Ya had to give me a hard one!! :-) You're right-- this CAN be tricky. But you're dead on the right track. You need to figure out your coursing (each course is one tile and one grout joint). Lets say yout tile is exactly 3" high, and you're using a 1/4" grout joint. Going by your drawing, I come up with a height of 51 1/2" high. You show a 6x12 piece on the bottomwith the 1/4" joint, that's 6 1/4". Next is 12 courses of subway tile. That's 39 inches (with 12- 1/4" joints). Then the pencil liner, which, if it were me, would get an 1/8" joint (to match the joint in the 3 rows of mosaics), so that's another 1 1/8", and then I'm assuming the chair rail is 2", plus another 1/8" joint, 2 1/8". Just a side note-- this would be another reason for NOT using the chair rail, unless you have the shelf come out over the top of the chair rail. With the other three sides, you can either cap the edges of the niche pieces, or you can have the niche pieces cap the edges of the wall. But the shelf MUST come over the edge of the wall tile. You want any water running down the face of the tile, rather than going into the grout joint. Alot of times, I'll even use a piece of granite tile, and round it out PAST the face of the tile, so that it doesn't even come doen the face of the tile, but actually gives a drip edge. Okay-- back to your niche. Just for the sake of argument, lets say the height is 51 1/2". You want to take into account the thickness of the cement board, as well as the kerdi (figure 5/8"). I would also, as you surmised, give it extra as a "fudge" factor . That way if you need the play, it's there, and if you don't, you can always fill it in with thinset. If it were up to me, and the chair rail was definitely going to stay, I'd set the framing at 50 1/2". The only question is, are you going to set your levels off the finished floor, or off the subfloor? Personally, I'd set it off the subfloor, but when I actually set the tile, set it over the finished floor, cutting it in. That way, if the floor's out of level at all, you'll never see it. Either way, it's up to you. The point is, I'd set the bottom of the niche framing an inch below what you expect the actual coursing to be. #10) That's the way it LOOKS when it's done. :-) You start with a full course above by nailing a piece of wood, and tiling off of that, and then removing it afterward and cutting in the bottom. As for the Kerdi in the shower, you can patch the holes afterward with Kerdi-Fix. You want to wait as long as possible to tile the shower and bathroom floors. You never want to be working over finished work any more than absolutely necessary. #11) I already addressed this above. #12) Install your wood trim first and tile to it. #13) Diamond hole saw. You can check some of the online tile tool supply sites. if you have a hard time locating them, let me know, and I'll see what I can do to find em for you. #14) this is where we get back to the thing about going from center to 1/4 and 3/4 tiles to get back to center. It works with diagonal layout, too. One other thing to think about, and this would work as a nice design feature, too-- from the chair rail up, turn one row of subway tiles on end, running them lengthwise up the sides of your diagonal tiles as a border. WOW!! This reminds me of Rodney Dangerfields's movie Back To School-- to paraphrase right after he finishes the oral exam and says "I feel like I just gave birth!! To an apprentice!!"

Well, I know how you feel there. But you will be tying up access to your closet if another person (not your partner) is using the john or taking a shower. If I read your room use correctly, you have half baths in attic and basement, but no other bathing facilities? Just in this area. IF you split this you could make a secondary toilet/vanity area which could also be entitled to use the shower. But you could still lock off their access to YOUR master bath and closet area. I think that MongoCT drew something like that. And technically, if there is no closet directly associated with the main bedroom, it technically cannot be called a bedroom. I understand what Terriks means about that. Even a small closet can keep it designated as a bedroom, but it would be hard to call it a "master suite." In my DH's house in Mass, I've been dealing with a similar problem, so I know how mind boggling it gets. On the main floor of the house, a cape, we have a full bath with a tub. It serves as a guest powder room. I am adding a master bath adjacent to it, but this bath only has room for a shower. So what I'm doing is making it possible for us to combine the two when we are at home with no guests. And when we have overnight guests upstairs, we can also lock the door from the living room which gives access via a tiny hall to this full bath. OR, conversely, I have a door further down the hall which is really the bedroom back door(another one exists)---it blocks off access to our bedroom from this direction, as well as to the 3/4 master bath. By making all the flooring the same in the full bath, the tiny hall, and the 3/4 master bath, it will I'm thinking look cohesive. I'll have to try to put this drawing up for you. It is much simpler than your plans, because our walkin closet access is separate from the bath areas. I'll have to go back and view your current setup for the plumbing etc, to see if your dream of a big bath can be achieved while keeping the walkin closet dedicated to your bedroom.

We take more baths (about 10 to 1) than showers, and that's why it's so low. And budge it's not perfect b/c if you zoom in, you can see a couple of small places where the grout didn't quite fill the space between the pieces on the shelf....might be a little more trouble to clean. So even though I wish he'd have used bullnose to trim it, I DO like it. And as I read this forum, I realize than most are not perfect, and some are outright scary! Except Bill's of course. ; ) Susan ~

Bill V - THank you - that is all I wanted to know. My gut told me the installers were not at fault with the installation - but I do not have your experience to go from. tuesday - When did I ever mention lawyers or legal or imply I in any way planned to go after the installer?! I said I was giving them the benefit of the doubt because I wasn't sure how they could have known before installing given the nature of the tile. I am still very friendly with the rep who sold me bad door trim. Its business - I was fair and reasonable with her and I will still recommend her because she did everything she could to remedy the situation and it isn't perfect but it is acceptable. Mistakes happen. The other day my dh told me my GC paid me a great compliment when the ice stone fabricator came by to talk about the fabrication he - admittedly - totally messed up. While they waited for me my GC said "L is more educated about building than a lot of homeowners and she knows how things should be, but she is reasonable. If you explain what you can do and are honest with her she will work with you." I am not looking to skewer anyone or get something for less than it is worth - but I do want what I - in good faith - paid for. CA - where I live is a no fault state - but I have no idea what that possibly has to do with ordering an expensive custom tile and receiving defective product? the "free tile" is hardly an "absolute gift" nor is it free. I paid good money for a product I saw in a showroom - I did not receive that product and if I want what I paid for I have to pay thousands of dollars to have the defective stuff ripped out and the new stuff installed. Sorry but I don't see the gift in that. Seaglass - I'm sorry you had a bad experience with Oceanside - that must have been very disappointing. While they appear to be much more responsive in this case I still don't really feel grateful or satisfied because I am still out a lot of money and the responsibility for the defective tile is theirs. My rep is a top dealer for Oceanside and said her experience with them has only been positive. I'm not giving up and will be talking to her on Monday and see what we can do. Cheri - thank you for the kind feedback. I also hesitated over that faucet. One reason I chose it was the huge expanse behind the sink - it begged for a faucet of some substance. I personally do not like any kind of pull-out - integrated or on the side - so I love how the sprayer works. I love the backsplash too - from 10 feet away ;-) If it did not look exactly like mold growing behind the tiles I would probably just deal with it - but something that looks like mold in a kitchen is just not something I want to look at every day while I work at my sink. I splurged on my backsplash because I do not have a window and I wanted something light reflective that would be visually appealing to someone working at the sink - not quite happening the moment.