We are currently at the point of putting up durock in our new shower. We will be painting redgard on top of the durock. We are using a Kohler cast iron pan and have built in a bench at the far end. We are DIYing it and neither of us have done a bathroom before so we are trying to do all our due diligence so our bathroom doesn't look like crap in the end! I have a bunch of questions I'm hoping some of you would be willing to help with. First, let me explain our design choices so you have an idea of the look we're going for. We're doing a white subway tile in the shower (Interceramic cheap stuff from Lowes). We bought the 2x6 bull nose pieces to run around the sides in the opposite direction as the subway tile. Chrome thermostatic rain shower. Frameless glass shower doors. The floor will be marble with a basketweave tile rug in the center. The vanity is white with carrera marble top. So here goes my questions: 1. Durock, fuzzy or smooth out? I've read that the fuzzy side should go out when using thinset, however I'm unclear on whether or not we should use the fuzzy side considering a layer of redgard will be painted over prior to tile. 2. Niches. We are adding two niches. One larger one, probably around a foot tall, and one narrow one directly below it for razors, etc. The back will be basketweave marble, the sides will be white subway tile we're using on the rest of the shower. We've read floor elfs tutorial on building a niche (THANK YOU) so I think we understand the construction. My question is for the "shelf" part. I'd really like to use a solid base however our budget is busted for getting something fabricated. Would it be possible to use a 3/8" marble tile and somehow polish the outer edge so its not raw ourselves? Which leads to my next question. 3. The bench. We have a bench we've constructed out of 2x4's and plywood. Again, I would really love to have a solid surface instead of tile but having something fabricated is not in our budget. I was considering using 2 18x18 marble tiles which should fit perfectly but would this look strange? Also, same problem of needing to polish the raw edge of the tile. Also, is marble just bad news for a top in the shower which will probably be coming in contact with shampoo, soap, shaving cream etc? I'm concerned about etching and looking like garbage. Any other suggestions on material we could use that'd be in keeping with the rest of our "look"? 4. Grout. I've discovered that I really love the look of white grout with white subway tile. However, I can't stand devoting a lot of time to keeping the shower clean. And I really can't stand dirty grout but I also hate to scrub it. We have a hand shower so we can do a quick rinse after showing to get rid of soap, shampoo residue but the odds of us wiping the entire shower down after each use are slim. Will a white epoxy grout on the walls just be a huge hassle with keeping it clean? Is it worth the premium vs just sealing a regular grout? And, lastly, any direction to a good tile tutorial would be appreciated. We want to make sure we don't have funky looking cuts or awkward looking tiles. If you've made it this far, thank you!! This endeavor has turned out to be a ton more work and research than I expected and this site has been an invaluable resource!

"You really learn from your mistakes. Never did a remodel before & had no help. You can look at a million pictures & think in your head how yours will look & then be so off." You had a contractor and a tile installer ... there is your "help" right there. They are the experienced professionals and should be advising you as to what will work and what won't. The tile installer, if he knew anything about tile at all, should have advised you about how the edges of the tile would look without trim. That he went ahead and laid it that way and left it that way is ridiculous. It looks bad and reflects badly on him. Vote for StoneTech's solution, and while I like Tre's, too, I'd be concerned about losing available space inside the niche if the tile wasn't demo'd first. If setting a prefab box on top of the existing tile, I'd make sure there was room for the size of the shampoo bottles you intend to store there.

Thank you for posting that example! I was just checking in on this thread hoping to see an example of where I might locate it on a tub/shower wall in terms of height since I will want to access it while lying down as well as while standing. Not a big deal (obviously!!!) but I want it to look right and to function right. I'm sure he is going to lose it on me. I have found all of this quite stressful at a time when work is also quite stressful. Oh well. This, along with a couple of the bathroom rated command hooks for loofahs and we should be all good for storage sice none of my bottles are more than 13 inches tall. I was not thinking quite clearly yesterday when I went to the Tile Shop. I wonder if he will also charge me $200 for tiling the little one? I hope not. He really seems lacking in creativity and a desire to do anything beyond what he "has seen" or certainly to do what I want; first on today's agenda will be me telling him that we are going to find a way to recess a medicine cabinet in a structural wall (after all it does support only the roof, not another whole story). He told me yesterday it would be impossible to do so. I really think he usually just doesn't want to do the work or put in the effort and hopes I will just take him at his word if he seems unpleasant enough to deal with. What s smart strategy! It really is not reflected in his other AL reviews but maybe they just took it as him being a seasoned authority. I probably should remind him I am an Angie's list member.

I think this is what you are saying. Your niches are not like the original image but they are lined up in the middle of a row of tiles. But within that row, one niche is 3/8" higher than the other, like this: It would bug the heck out of me that they didn't start on a full tile in the first place, but that's usually how it ends up most of the time, like A or B. On top of that there is the3/8" height difference. I would have to compensate for this at the very least but using grout that matched the tile so I wasn't visually measuring that all the time. However, I was trained to differentiate between 0.5 of a mm for my job at one point, so 3/8" is huge to me visually. Not so with many people. Why do you know about it? Did you notice it yourself? If you did I think you have to have him change it. But if not, use grout that minimizes it.