For reasons I won't go into detail on, I got stuck acting as GC to finish my custom home. Sheetrockers are finishing up this week and I need some guidance before heading on to getting the bathrooms tiled. I've been trying to make sense of all the info on this forum and reading other websites about doing mud-built shower bases to the point where I feel like my head is about to explode.

Actually I have two questions for you.

First, I had selected Emser Paradiso porcelain tile (in natual) for my bathrooms because:

1. it isn't slippery like a lot of other tile;
   
2. DH and I actually BOTH liked it which was kind of miraculous; and
   
3. it's on sale so I can get it for a whole lot less than pretty much anything else.
   
   Now however, I'm worried that maybe Paradiso isn't a good choice after all because the Emser website says it has a water absorbtion rate of 3.75%!!! The picture on their website shows the tile installed in a bathroom with a shower tho and, when we picked it, I figured if Emser's website showed it being used in a shower, it must be okay to use that way. So, maybe the website is supposed to say 0.375%?

Fortunately I haven't purchased the tile yet but was planning to do so in the morning. If I have to go with a different tile though, that's going to be yet another blow to a budget that has already been beat to smithereens fixing original builder's screw-ups, paying off liens from subs he should have paid, and paying a lawyer to try to get some portion of our money back from him. Plus there is hassle of trying to find something else that both DH and I can agree on. So do any of you have actual experience with this tile??? Is it okay for use in wet places like a shower or not? If not, do you know of a similar looking tile we could use in the showers so we could stick with the Paradiso everywhere else. We're also using Paradiso in our kitchen and great room so we're talking over 1500 sq ft of tile total and even another $1 or $2 per square foot is going to add up.

Next, could some of you kindly tell me - in baby-talk terms please - just what I need to specify with respect to getting my showers built correctly so that they don't leak? And then, what should I watch out for to make sure that whoever I hire is doing the job the way it is supposed to be done. I don't have the time, energy, or money for another law suit if my showers start leaking and my tile guy won't or can't fix them!

A few details re the showers:

I actually will have two showers plus a shower-floor-like pedestal for my washer and dryer. All three are on the second floor and the entire floors of both bathrooms and the laundry will tiled. I had hoped to use the 16" tiles on the floor (except for inside the shower where I figured we would use a smaller mosaic). I am willing to use the 12" tiles instead tho if they will be less prone to cracking. (I've only installed tiles on a concrete slab before so I don't know about putting them on the second floor.)

Also, one of the showers is approximately 39" x 72" and is going to be a roll-in shower. My original builder dropped the floor for the shower a couple of inches and cut some ibeam floor trusses in the process! That has been been a devil of a mess to fix but my engineer now assures me we are okay to move forward and that the floors are no longer flexing.

The second shower is a neo-round shower which came as a kit that actually included a pre-fab shower base....but original builder didn't put the drain pipe in the right location to match up with the pre-fab base and we can't move the drain pipe where it would need to be because that would be right in the middle of a floor truss. Thus this shower floor is going to have to be mud-built so that the kerb exactly matches the shape of the prefab-base so that the glass shower walls will fit on it.

Finally, in the laundry room, original builder put the floor drain right in the middle of the room (instead of over near the washer as specified) and then failed to make any provision to slope the floor. To solve the problem, we built a sturdy 16" high pedestal for the washer and dryer. The pedestal has a four inch lip all the way around and a drain in the middle. The plan is to mud and tile it just like a shower floor.

So, given all that, should I insist on my tile man using Shulter-Kerdi system? It's not clear to me that the Shulter system can even be used for a roll in shower or whether it will work when a shower isn't a standard size. Plus, I have no idea yet how much it costs to go that route in comparison with an old-fashioned mud-built shower.

As I said, I'm pretty lost at the moment. Help please!

Oh, one last thing, if you personally know a great tile man in central Texas, please, please, please, send me his name and number. You can email me thru my mypage link.

Here is a link that might be useful: Emser Paradiso tile