Bill, Removed all floor planks and installed plywood, glad we chose that option. Will begin the Kerdi application this week. Question: Can I Redguard my niches (2) and Kerdi the rest of the shower or do you advise against that? I am afraid of all the cuts necessary when waterproofing the niches with Kerdi. My concern is them working together (Kerdi & Redguard). If I can Redguard the niches would I waterproof the niches first then apply the Kerdi? Please let me know what you suggest is the best approach. Thanks again for your help.

You could fill that with tinted epoxy or with unsanded grout. With epoxy, work it into the crack, let it cure most of the way and when it is firm, use a razor to take it down flush with the surface of the tile. It's difficult to color epoxy after it cures, so the original color that you use will be the color of the finished line. You could use powdered pigment and pounce it into the almost cured epoxy to give it a more mottled look. With grout, I'd use unsanded so it can better be worked into the fissure, and unsanded will match the texture of the tile better than sanded (but not as well as an epoxy fill). After the grout has cured you can then use colored markers to blend the grout line with the mottled colors of the surrounding tile. Then seal the repair to seal in the colors. The one that would be easier to hide to the eye would be using grout, as it's easier to vary the color of the repaired fissure with different colored markers. If you do a grout repair let it fully dry before you color it with markers, you don't want latent moisture throwing off the shades that you apply. Oh, and your shower looks great! Mongo

"Mongoct-- (sorry OP) If not using Kerdi shower pan, but just a mudbed/liner, can you use a topical membrane for a shower floor? I've posted previously, but it didn't catch your attention. I'm trying to understand this more as well... " Sorry if I missed your previous post. I seem to be hit and miss on the forums these days. I'm a little confused by the "mudbed/liner" comment and the desire to use it in conjunction with a topical membrane. So let me ramble a bit: I consider "liners" to be the CPE or CPVC thick shower membrane liners, the ones where you use a deck mud preslope, then install the liner over that with a clamping drain, then top the liner with another layer of deck mud, and you tile upon that. If that's what you're asking about, no I wouldn't use a topical membrane on top of all that. Here's what I consider to be a liner installation. Now back-tracking a bit: There are folk that use a topical membrane with a clamping drain, but they have to "dish out" the sloped mud bed as it gets close to the drain. It's sometimes referred to as the "divot method". That way the topical membrane will drain to the drain's weep holes. If you don't use a divot, then the raised part of the clamping drain can sort of act like a dam, causing water under the tile to pool around the drain. The area around the drain might appear perpetually wet. The divot method is not a technique I embrace. Nothing really wrong with it, it's just not my cup of tea. Here is a photo showing the "divot" carved out of the mud base: Virtually every shower I do is a one-off size or shape, so I'm almost always doing a sloped deck mud base. As to which topical membrane to use, when using Kerdi, I'll do a sloped mud pan and then cover that with Kerdi. If using Hydroban, then I'll still use a Kerdi drain in the sloped mud floor but then use Hydroban on the floor and walls. So if you want to use a topical membrane, then no , do not also use a liner within the floor. One membrane is all you want. Does that help?

Hi Julie, We are going to drill holes into the grout and have 4 little metal dowels that the shelf will sit on. We already had our dowels, but you can buy them at Lowes or Home Depot. The glass we ordered through Henderson (I think it's a national chain) where they'll cut to any size. Glass in a shower is required to be tempered. A 4x14 piece of 1/4 inch thick tempered glass is running us about 30.00. Hope that helps! -- Lukki