I just saw this thread. For a few years, I tried making my own paste by running the tomatoes through a food mill to remove seeds and skins, then taking the resulting thick juice and putting it in plastic picnic plates, then into the food dehydrator. Its not that easy, too deep in the plates it ferments before it tries, to shallow you end up with 'tomato leather'. But with practice, it was reasonably easy to come up with a decent paste. But its a whole lotta work for not much paste. The reasons I tried was to get a better tasting result, figuring that most store-bought tomato paste comes from mechanically harvested hybrid plum tomatoes that are picked at the convenience of the factory, which is why so many of them taste like cardboard. LIke others, I've found that just buying a few cans of tomato paste and adding it as a thickener is the way to go. I usually stick with Contadina, which seems to be pretty consistent with good flavor. Far better than anything else I've tried. Each season, we can 100 or so quarts of thickened, tomato-based sauces. With that amount, I buy tomato paste in #10 cans, by the case of 6 - even with shipping, its half the cost of buying those 12 oz cans in the store. I open a can, divide it into plastic bags each holding two cups, one bag is enough for a 10 wt batch of sauce. They can easily be frozen.

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!!"

I am a fairly new DIY tiler. I can tell you that taping seams was not difficult. There are tapes that come with an adhesive so you just stick it on (like masking tape) and thinset over the seams as you go (pushing the thinset through the crevices in the tape). Be polite, but firm, with your BIL. This is YOUR shower and you need to be satisfied with the outcome, even if it takes a little longer. Also, I picked up a few tiling books at my local library to research before and use as a reference during my first project. You might consider doing that so you have some documented professional information to reference if you run into trouble (or disagree with your BIL).

1) no, they can't. 2) It depends on the tile used. If you're using thru body color porcelain, it's relatively easy to do. If it's anything else, it's a bad idea, because the edge will look terrible, and depending on the tile, it may not even be strong enough. As for the shelves they're using, there are only a couple of colors-- white and bone. Pretty much cut and dry. All that said, I agree with remodelfla. This should be redone, but not that the shelf should be moved down. it should be removed completely. Those corner shelves are not made to put any real weight on. for that you want something like the betterbench. It's an aluminum tray that sits on the edge of the tile, gets bolted to the wall, filled with mortar, and then tiled. THAT, you could put your weight on and not worry about it breaking, and end up cutting yourself badly. Here's a pic of it installed: Here is a link that might be useful: Innovis Better Bench