Thanks for the feedback, flyleft; I appreciate it. I laid out some tiles to show my husband what I was thinking of, and he liked it. it's still hard for me to visualize how a whole wall of glass tile will look topped with the stone border. Got to work on that vision thing! Loved the rock column in the link you sent.

The river rock pavements you see are usually done by embedding the rocks into concrete and tapping them level, so there is no cutting. It's hard to control the slicing because, unlike square tiles or brick, the dang things wobble. And your rocks are small, so that's a lot of time for your fingers to be near the blade of the saw. The rocks are usually granite (at least around here) and need a diamond blade. several of them probably If you can figure out some sort of jig that will hold them stable as you move them past the blade, it could work. But that's an enormous amount of risky work just for a "look", and then you have to set them and grout them.

"He said it passed the flood test and when the new curb and pan were built a new slope was built into the new shower pan." Could be semantics...could be poor grammar...could be obfuscation, however: 1) ",,,it passed the flood test..." Well whoop-dee-doo. Does that simply mean that it didn't leak? It should also mean that the water drains quickly and cleanly, with no water puddles left on the membrane. 2) "...a new slope was built into the new shower pan." "Into the shower pan" versus "under the shower pan". Who knows. Different terminology, semantics, wordsmithing. Again, it could have been done correctly or this could just be careful language. However, the sloped mud preslope should have been installed on the flat subfloor. The membrane should have then been placed on the sloped preslope. This way, the membrane itself is sloped to the drain. That is a building code requirement. On top of the sloped membrane goes another layer of mud. The tile gets thinsetted to the second layer of mud. Most water retention problems in mud bases are due to the membrane being placed flat on the subfloor and single layer of sloped mud being installed on top of the flat membrane, with the tile going on top of that single layer of sloped mud. Again, that is a code violation. With regular use of the shower, any mud layer on top of the membrane will indeed always hold some moisture. But if the membrane is sloped as it should be, excessive moisture in the mud bed will follow the slope of the membrane to the drain and exit the mud bed via the secondary weep holes in the drain. If the membrane is flat on the floor, then the mud bed can become saturated with standing water. The excessive buildup of moisture can turn into a mess. Big question, find out if the membrane itself is sloped. Choose your wording carefully. If you ask "was the membrane itself sloped, because if you didn't slope it, that's a code violation and you'll have to rip it out and rebuild it at your cost" they may just answer "yes". If you ask "can you tell me how the shower base was built, from subfloor-to-tile", you may get a better answer. Maybe they did slope the membrane. Maybe they didn't. Regardless, good luck with it all.

We chose the Dusty Gray epoxy grout. I think the Raven would have looked great as well, but we decided to play it safe since I had heard from several designers in my area to not use the darker color. We still haven't hung the handheld on the wall (should've had them drill the holes in the tile for the mount at the time). I did purchase a bronze drain cover with fish pattern, but I need to round the corners to make it sit flush. Aside from our contractor bailing on us before the job was completed, we are fairly happy with how it all turned out.