Yes, she's the same daughter from "way back when". Time certainly flies, doesn't it? She never had any issues from her peers in high school regarding being a smart or a hard working girl, or being geared towards STEM. She's well-rounded. Not musical, though she was in the ensemble for the school musicals. Very athletic. An "All Star" in Field hockey, An All Star, All-State and Academic All American in lacrosse. Team MVP for both sports. No issues in college either in terms of her being committed to her academics. A nice transition for her in her freshman year is that she was in the "honors dorm". So she was surrounded by serious students. But they also knew how to party. And they certainly did! She really is on her way, so to speak. In some ways it's easy, in that a STEM-type education easily leads into a STEM-type of profession down the road. My son is the complete opposite. Very musical, in a few bands, he was the lead in the high school musicals, etc. Also athletic. Also team captain, team MVP, etc. While he is intelligent and does well academically, he does well "when he wants to". He's totally a liberal arts kind of guy. Zero, and I mean ZERO interest in STEM. After his freshman year in college, he took a year off to go out-of-country to do volunteer work. He's back in school now. I wont say he's disillusioned...but he's trying to put together "liberal arts education" with "career after graduation" and he's seeing that they don't line up as well as a STEM-education does. There's always the argument that a liberal arts education is just that...a basis for a well-rounded education. He's a prolific reader. While he's on a path, and doing well on the path that he is on, he's trying to figure out where the path leads. So he's still searching. But yes, we are empty-nesters! Good and bad. Miss the kids, but it's fun being adult-ish again. We're not sure what we're going to do long-term with regards to the house. I love this house, the grounds, everything. It's all "us". But I could move. I just have no idea where to move to! My only requirement would be to remain on the water. Ocean, lake, whatever. Both kids have said if we ever sell this house that they want their bedrooms "pulled out of the house" for their children to eventually sleep in. lol. I told them I'll build them new ones. Good news is long-term the kids want to live near us, or want us to live near them. So we'll see how things shake out down the road. Back on your shower topic! If you want to do a mudded pan, you can make your own pitch strips. For example, let's say you're going to use the Laticrete flanged drain. It needs 1-1/4" of mud under the flange. If your drain is off-center, no worries: 1) Take the longest drain-to-wall (not drain-to-corner) measurement. Let's say it's 30". For a code-minimum 1/4" per foot pitch over that 2-1/2' run, you need 5/8ths inch of elevation change. 2) Add 5/8" to 1-1/4" and you'll have a perimeter elevation of 1-7/8", or 1-7/8" thick of mud at the base of each wall. Now the steepest pitch you can have by code is 1/2" per foot. So as long as none of your other wall-to-drain distances are less than half (3) Make your screed strips that will run from the drain flange to the walls or from the drain to the corners. Your screed strips will all go from 1-7/8" tall at the walls (including corners) to 1-1/4" tall at the drain. No matter what their length they will all be 1-7/8" tall at the wall and 1-1/4" tall at the drain. Since your drain is slightly off-center, the four different "triangular-shaped" parts of the floor that make up the inverted pyramid will have slightly different pitches from one another, but each pitched part will be in it's own plane. And you'll have a consistent mud depth around the perimeter of the shower. If you used those manufactured pitch strips, you'd have the same pitch (1/4" per foot throughout) on all four sloped parts of your floor, but the depth of the mud at the walls would vary throughout the shower. So your bottom course of wall tile would have to be scribed for it to fit. Easiest way to make your sloped screed strips is to rip the required slope on a table saw. It's very easy with a home-made scrap wood tapering jig. Some folk like to have a perimeter screed strip (in your case 1-7/8" tall) around the entire perimeter of the shower. They pack the mud against that, then pull the strip, and fill in the gap with mud and pack the gap full. If you do that I recommend tapering one side of the strip (wider at the top, narrower on the bottom), it's easier to pull a tapered strip out of packed mud than a rectangular shaped strip. So: Pack your perimeter mud. Pack your drain flange mud. Fill in the remainder, using the screed strips as your guide. Pull the strips, fill and pack the gaps. Clear as (deck) mud?

Thanks for the nice comments, all. I hope to take pics tomorrow and get them up Monday. @jam sf we actually ordered it through a tile store in Key West ( nowhere near us, long story) but I have seen similiar tile online, including at Amazon. I'm sure there are other patterns as I've seen some on this board, but I never looked into it because I knew I wanted the 1-inch mosiac. @willemsen: we used Bright White. We did a sample of Alabaster but felt it made the tile look pinkish. I was worried that the bright white would be too white, but we're thrilled with the final look. And yep, it does sparkle with the UCLs on. :) more to come, I promise.

I keep revisiting this thread, hoping for a Sign. :) Is it ever acceptable to use a shower pan and create a tile threshold over it, thereby making it higher? As for cleaning the nonskid elements of a shower or tub. I have some wonderful nonskid strips in my otherwise very slippery acrylic tub where I take my showers. Yes, they pick up and hold grime a little too well and you can't just go gangbusters cleaning acrylic. The other day I used some Softscrub and a curved nail brush that fits around a couple of fingers. With very little elbow grease ALL the grime was removed and the shape of the nail brush is very ergonomic.

I can't believe how many comments there are suggesting that this problem would go away just by various corrective techniques. It's obvious that the tiles are bowed and that no amount of clips, or changes to grout lines, or better plumbing of walls will change that. Many tiles, even some expensive ones, suffer from this firing problem. The first thing I always do when I find a tile I like is put two pieces face to face to look for any gap or bowing. If there is some, it's a problem I don't want to deal with. If I see no problem, I test a few more pairs to be sure. The last shower I had done used 12" X 24" tiles that were dead flat. But I still had them laid in a stacked pattern, with no overlap, just to avoid any lippage possibilities as large format tile always is a challenge: I agree the OP's photos look bad, but the job appears uniform and consistent in its badness. To me this means the tile guy did the best he could with bowed tile laid in an inappropriate pattern for it. His fault was not stopping at an early point to discuss with the contractor and the owner what this was going to look like when it was done. But let's not keep speculating about non-existent solutions for tile that is so severely bowed. This is only going to be fixed by a redo using a different tile that is flat.