I would like recomendations of good quality products for this method,... A sheet of polyethylene plastic for the slip sheet on the floor and enough expanded diamond mesh to cover the slip sheet to start with. I tack the mesh down with just a few nails to keep it from flopping around. And band-aids for working with the diamond mesh. Deck mud is deck mud. Portland cement and sand. Handyman-guy will know the mix. Membrane? Chloraloy (CPE) from Noble. Not sure if it's sold at the box stores. I do recall seeing a roll of Oatey membrane at Home Depot. You might need molded corner pieces at the curb. Sealant. Depends on seaming, corners, etc. Stay within product lines and buy what the manufacturer recommends. Everything is available on their websites, but again, your handyman will know. Also be advised that a $1 tube of silicon caulk can not be used in place of of Nobel 150 for example. Thinset? Three most common in my area are Custom, Laticrete, Mapei are all fine. Modified. Grout? The same. Never had a problem with any of those three lines. You mentioned "grout admix", most grouts are already modified in the bag. You'll want "sanded grout" with the pebble tile due to the larger grout lines. All grout and all thinset that you buy will be powdered material, in bags. Nothing "premixed" that comes in a resealable plastic tub. Premixed stuff belongs in a dumpster. If he recommends premixed, fire him. If you buy premixed, fire yourself. If the sales-apron at the store recommends premixed, recommend to the manager that the apron be fired. For pebble tile I'll sometimes increase the pitch of the floor a bit to aid drainage. Minimum and typical is 1/4" per foot, maximum is 1/2" per foot. Pebble tile can sometimes take a lot of grout due to the irregular grout lines. So buy a few bags more than you need, you can always return the unused bags. Make sure the lots are consistent. I'll sometimes dry mix several bags together for an even blend, that way you'll see no differences if your bags are from different lots. Depends on the size of the job though, and by no means is dry-mixing bags a standard practice. If you go to a box store and the bag are firm/hard, or dust covered, look elsewhere. Cement-based products do have a shelf life, so buy from a store with good turnover. Walls? If not using Hydroban, RedGard, or any other topical membrane on the walls, then use 6-mil sheet polyethylene over the studs. I prefer cement board over hardie. Durock first, Wonderboard second. Not gospel, just my preference. 1/2" thick. Some use nails, I use hi-low screws to install cement board. Expensive, but again, my preference. Alkali-resistant mesh tape for the wall board seams. Talk to your guy and see what he prefers. But most everything mentioned there is fairly generic and pretty much interchangeable. Your handyman is the one who should give you the materials shopping list. If you omit anything, you're slowing him down and costing yourself money since you are the supplier. If he omits anything, he's costing himself money. Last word on pebble tile. It's so easy to set the sheets so that you can see the outline of the sheets after everything is grouted. It looks so pathetically cheesy. I blend the sheet edges together by pulling a few pebbles off the sheet edges and resetting the individual stones back in place by hand. It takes a little longer but you end up with a singular-looking pebble floor instead of a floor that looks like individual pebble sheets.

It's hard to say if their repairs were correct because I don't know what the real problem was. Let's say it's a wet room. There is a continuous waterproof membrane on the subfloor, both in the shower and outside the shower. Then a mud bed. Then tile. That's a case where the thinset and mud bed under the shower tile can wet, and the moisture in the shower mud bed can "plume out" under the shower partition wall and wet the mud and eventually the grout and tile on the bathroom floor. A "possible solution" without demoing the shower wall would be to remove a several inches of tile on the bathroom floor side of the saddle along the entire length of the glass partition wall. Dig out the mud to expose the membrane. I'd even undermine the saddle along its full length by digging back the mud about 1/2" back along the length of the saddle. I'd want the exposed membrane to be clean. If the vertical wall of mud under the saddle was coarse and rough, I'd then patch that vertical wall of mud under the saddle to make it smooth. I'd want the underside of the marble saddle to be clean. I'd then use a waterproofing membrane to tie the exposed floor membrane to the underside of the saddle. I don't know what type of membrane you have, but it would have to be compatible with the floor membrane. If you can use a paint-on membrane like Hydroban or RedGard, paint it on the floor membrane, on the smoothed vertical wall of mud under the saddle, and onto the bottom of the saddle. That will connect your floor membrane to the bottom of the saddle. Any moisture in the shower floor mud will now be contained within the shower footprint. Now pack new mud in the excavated area outside the shower and re-tile. It's not a perfect solution, it might not even be the right solution because that may not be how your shower is built. But it's an idea of how I would consider making repairs were I the one doing so. The problem I have with them patching the area around the door is: If it was not the door leaking and it is a capillary thing going on down below, depending on how they detailed the added membrane when they made the repair by the door, they might have simply masked the presence of the moisture down below. ie, the moisture is still there. And more moisture is being added every time you shower. But by adding waterproofing on top of the wet area, they might just be sealing moisture into the bed. So the marble by the door may appear drier because it's above the new waterproofing, but the mud below the new waterproofing is still wet. If the area in front of the door where they made the repairs dries and the area to the left of the door where they made no repairs remains wet, that's an indication that what they did was a band-aid cover-up and not a true repair. Again, there could be several possible causes and several possible repairs because there are several ways to build a shower. I'm guessing and supposing. I'll be gone for a few days, good luck with it all!

We have it in our master and guest for two very different looks. Every person who uses the shower in either room comments on how great it is under foot. In the master we used a light color that matches the considerable amount of Botticino on the walls perfectly, so the look is subtle but lends a contemporary edge. Still it is so great under foot and complements the exceedingly classic Bottcino so well I can't see it dating - it is not a strong enough statement as used. Our guest bathroom is one big statement - lol. My vision for it was a stream through the wood because it opens to the outside and I wanted it to feel like you could be outside. I found an amazing bronze vessel sink with dragonflies that became my design muse. It is a long narrow room with the shower at the end. The entire bathroom floor is river rock. In this room the shower walls are slate and the river rocks are a multi mix that matches well. The installations was not the best - seeing Bill's picture makes me cringe a bit. It isn't horrible but I wasn't there for it - miscommunication of timing - and the grout was not cleared away as much as it should have been. ALso I used Costco pebbles for this bath and it was not as high quality - the stones were not as dense per sheet as the higher cost. I am still happy with the overall look. In some ways while aesthetically I notice it could be a bit better, practically it works better for people using the bathroom who have heeled shoes. But it does take someone with some experience with river rock to install it well. I supervised the master bath and it is much better. As far as cleaning - we have had it a year now and it still looks great - it is unsealed and really doesn't take much effort at all. In the master we use oxy clean to keep the lighter grout looking good but the rocks don't seem to require anything special. We don't use bath products with much residue but it doesn't seem that upkeep is necessarily a big concern with using river rock.

When I set pebble-style sheets, I almost always pull off a portion of the perimeter pebbles and rotate and reset them by hand. Doing that blends adjacent sheets together into a seamless look and eliminates a the sheet lines that you can see telegraphing through in your floor. If you want to keep your pebbles "as-is", then a charcoal colorant is the only color I'd recommend as the grout will blend with your pebbles and hide those sheet lines. So I agree with your choice of color. Aquamix Grout Colorant is the colorant I recommend. It is epoxy, it's a fine product. Colorants can be screwed up, so I'd have a get-together with the folks at the tile shop and with your installer. Tell them you're willing to try the colorant, but if you're not satisfied with the results you'll retain the option of having the entire pan R&R'd at no cost to you. If they hedge, have them R&R it now and get a better pebble installation and the proper grout color in the process. Good luck with it. Right now the floor looks like it's covered with peach mildew.