No, no premixed thinset is allowed! Use dry powder and mix it yourself. Either buy modified powder, or buy unmodified and modify it with an admix. Mapei, Custom, or Laticrete all make fine product, they are all available in the box stores. I think HD carries Custom and Lowes carries Laticrete and Mapei. Behind the subway you can use gray thinset, it's a little less expensive than white. Behind the glass I always use white thinset so the glass color doesn't get muddled by gray thinset behind it. The amount of "muddle" depends on how translucent the glass is. Marble is often best done with a marble thinset, especially when used in large areas, like a marble floor. You only have trim pieces so it may not be that critical. What is critical is to use white thinset for your marble. Were you to use gray thinset behind marble, marble, being porous, could "wick" the gray through and you could get discoloration with your marble pieces. Even when using white, realize that the marble may discolor a bit after installation. This is usually just moisture being absorbed into the marble, and after it fully cures/dries the marble should return to its original color. If this works for you, just do the subways first with regular gray modified thinset. Let that cure for a day. Then come back and set your decorative marble and glass with a white modified thinset. Did the glass tile come with installation instructions, as far as techniques to install them? There are a few tricks to make things easier. Too thick of a bed of thinset and you can get excessive squeeze out between the pennies. Too little and you can get voids behind the pennies, the more translucent the glass, the worse that would be. Best, Mongo

good porcelain is easy to clean and color is less the issue than quality of the material. White grout is more problematic, but if you use a good quality stain resistant grout and then properly seal its really not bad. I thoroughly clean my white subway with a commercial steamer I own 1 a year and reseal the grout every 2. The majority of the time I clean it like I would any other shower and have no problem keeping it clean. Where white on white is an issue is the floor. Before I redid my bathrooms this is what I had in builders grade carp and it was impossible to keep clean. I use medium greys and browns for floor grouts.

Side, the drawing is a little off - the door actually clears the toilet by about 1.5". :) It's a New York bathroom! Anyway, thanks Bill - I realize this is something the tile guy/contractor should do but in my case, I am responsible for buying all the materials and such, and he's just going to do the actual work, so I'm measuring for myself. There is no tub deck. The contractor is going to build a wall for alcove installation - hopefully it will be a knee wall with glass above, if I can afford the glass. If not, it'll be a full wall, which will of course require more tile. Thank you for the measurements - I'm not quite sure what you mean by bullnose on the 3" side. Does that mean that each outer corner will need to have bullnosed tile all the way up and down? That's what I assumed but I wasn't sure. Inner corners don't require anything special, right? Thanks for your help!

It really depends on how sharp the corner is. If it is somewhat rounded off, it's hard to just roll it and make a straight line. You may need to use a brush or tape and create a straight line yourself. If you do use tape, you should use the blue and press firmly down the edge where the paint can bleed under onto the other color. You can then use the color that is under the tape first against the tape to seal that edge there so that there won't be any bleed when you use the real color.