One other thing, there are water softener salts that have an additive that helps with excess iron. I was in WalMart today and saw a couple of pallets of bags of it out in the garden shop. With my cottage well, I have to preface this by saying that the house was owned by an elderly couple and they'd done no maintenance on anything for years. The water supply was pretty atrocious. I ran the outdoor hose bib then went in the basement and banged on the pipes, the pipes puked orangey brown water, so thick that I had small piles of sediment and a stained lawn. Regardless, the gist of treating the well is to chlorine shock it. You also want the chlorine to run down the sides of your well as best you can so everything gets hit with chlorine. Let it soak. Overnight. I then hit it with another dose of chlorine and opened all the faucets in the house one-by one until I could smell chlorinated water running out. Then I'd close the faucet and move to the next one. You want all faucets, all waterlines, laundry, hose bibs, fridge water line, everything, to get a dose of chlorine. Again, shut the plumbing off and let it sit overnight. The next day flush everything out. For severe cases, You can even have the well pump pulled and the pump and pipe can be sprayed with a chorine solution. I have heard of a Pasteurization process where they come in and essentially "steam clean" your well. My lake house was so bad that I even yanked out all the old plumbing in the basement and re-piped everything. Fortunately is was a small cottage, so it was easy to do. I always think it's worth it to shock your well to see if you can rid yourself of the problem. Since you have a water softener, or using those "anti-iron" salts might help. You could add an iron filter too. All depends on how bad your situation is. It sounds like yours is manageable. One last thing, if you shock your well and don't want to run the chlorinated waste into your septic system, then you can flush out your well by running one of your outside hose spigots.

Bill, Mongo- thanks. We will definitely give it an extra day. My husband will be disappointed (!) I did take a bath last night- heaven. I have the cleaning crew here again today doing picky things like feeling all the tile surface with their hands for haze and grout smears and touching up baseboards and walls. I do not feel guilty in the least, either. I told them not to run water in the shower. When my husband gets home tonight, I will have him help me move in the linen cabinet and rehang things. Can't wait to turn the floor on either- I wait 30 days from SLC poured?

I'm sure the pros and others will have great ideas but I think you should use more than one size, especially if you aren't using a separate accent strip. You could use the small tiles in an accent strip and the larger (5 or 12 inch) tile in the field. Or to add more interest, use all three sizes - one size over the accent strip and another size under the accent strip. I don't think you have to worry about them looking too busy since they're all the same color. You could even set some of them on a diagonal. I used some software (recommended by Bill) to design mine and it really helped me visualize various patterns in my space. If you'd like, I can check for the name when I get home later. Good luck!

Kendog-- As to the first two choices, I think either one would aork aestheitcally speaking. It would really be a matter of which look YOU like best. We're planning to use pencil rail around our niches as well as above and below the stone and glass liner. Would it look best with pencil around the window as well or could we just overlap the tile there? I would NEVER just overlap the tiles. Being you're going to use the pencil liner for trimming the niche, I don't think it would look out of place if you were to trim out the window as well. The pencil trim has a higher profile than the tile. Should all of it be cut down at the back to make it more flush with the tile if we use it to cover the edge where the tile meets the wall? No-- it's MADE to have that kind of protruding profile. Trim will be needed on the opposite wall where the half wall ends or maybe we could try to bullnose this with a router? The color of the tile edge nearly matches the color of the tile face. Nearly isn't close enough. Either it's exact, or it's not good enough. If you'd rather not use the pencil liners there, I'd use one of Schluter's bullnosing strips. as for the curb, you could always use a marble threshold, thereby elliminating the need for bullnose. Not sure about yours, but most curbs, after backerboard and tile, are about 5 1/2" wide, and a 6" wide threshold set flush to the tile on the outside of the curb, will give you just enough of an overhang on the inside to provide for a nice drip edge. This will do a couple of things for you. First, it'll provide another layer of protection for the curb. Secondly, it'll provide for a nice flat surface for the shower door to sit on, and third, it looks alot nicer than two back to back bullnose pieces. Like this: The floor is about 18 square feet. Do you think it would work well if we cut our wall tile into 4 inch squares to use for the floor? Could we just sand the edges to make them smooth or would we need to use a router? You COULD cut them down, but if the floor isn't perfectly flat, you could end up with uncomfortable edges under your feet. Again, unless the face and edge of the tile look exactly the same, you don't want to use ANY kind of abraiding process (router, sand paper, grinder, polishing wheels) that will show in the finished product. Our tile is rectified porcelain and we'd like to use 1/16 grout lines if possible. If it's rectified, that shouldn't be a problem.