Totally agree with Bill. It's your house, not his. Now, there can be leeway due to materials. If the tile plan was not set forth in stone (no pun intended) when the person bid on the job, and he bid the job at a "generic labor rate" for ceramic, then come installation time you spring very beautiful but very uneven and somewhat tedious to install handmade and home-fired tile...sure, he's got reason to talk. Because your material choice form left field just blew his labor estimate out of the water. Three hours is more than adequate to install, waterproof, and tile a custom framed niche. Even kerdi it.

In a typical shower the rough wall height versus tile size differential could have been made up by the thickness of the mud used to shape the pan. With a curbless you lose that ability, as you have 96" of wall height to cover and four full tiles plus grout lines comes up to roughly 95". Ideally (my opinion) it would have been taken care of during the design phase. Personally I'd like to see a full course at the floor, with the bottom edge of that botom course of tile being cut to match the floor slope. As to how to deal with the extra inch? That's where "it depends" comes in to play. Any solutions depend on the style of your bathroom as well as what looks right to you. The 1" gap could have been left at the ceiling, and the 1" of wall could have been painted the same color as the ceiling. Or it could be filled in with trim, either wood or tile. Or a portion or all of the ceiling could have been dropped an inch inside the shower. Or you could have split the installation of the wall tiles at any one of the three horizontal grout lines, and inserted a 1" wide liner or deco strip running horizontally around the shower between courses of your 24" tile. But to me it depends on the style of the room. However, in my opinion, a wedge sliver of wall tile going from 1" to nothing at the floor would be the least desirable. If he's leaving you with a wedge shaped gap below the bottom course of full wall tile, an idea might be to use floor tile to fill in that wedge. That way the wedge would blend with the floor instead of sticking out like a sore thumb on an otherwise totally slick wall. But again, these are all "it depends" ideas. Some might work, some might sound horrific, or all might sound horrific. It really does depend on the style of the room. Side comment; some areas (code-wise) do not allow the shower floor to slope to the door. Often times curbless showers with trench drains have to be sloped away from the door, with the trench drain on the back wall. Might not be applicable in your locale, but I thought I'd toss it out. I hope you find a decent solution.

Well mine is actually a mix of extra tiles I ordered for the kitchen backsplash (long story short...they're the pieces that I should have ordered bullnose) and they're too expensive to just let sit in a box, so I thought I'd do a backsplash on the desk to remind me how stupid I was for the rest of my life LOL But since they're not bullnose (they're handmade tiles) I needed an edge for them, and didn't want to spend a fortune so I purchased some really pretty little glass tiles to go on the top and near the bottom two little tiles deep. But frankly, that's hand made tile AND glass tile LOL Bill and Mongo have made me so danged tile crazy (in a good way) that it sounded like a fun project for the future...but maybe not heh heh As I typed this I got a new email with my tile install bid...CHOKE ummm $17,900....Ouch. Maybe I can tackle this little job LOL

Thanks Mongo, I spent a long time today at the tile store looking at all the grouts and decided only this so far: set the wall tiles tight with unsanded grout. But I am having a terrible time with picking the type/color for the floor in the shower and the bathroom. I looked at Mapei, Custom and Laticrete (sp?) grays and none look right. Many almost looked purple or blue not silver at all or else they look way to dark against the rest of the floor. The tile store had bunches of people helping me, all women, luckily they were not busy and the general consensus was to pick Customs Snow White for both the silver glass shower floor and the bath floor and the avalance on the walls. Next to the Avalanche the Snow White did look "a little" gray but isn't that still too white for a shower floor that I paid almost $600 for silver glass so I wouldn't have a white floor in the shower!? Ack! Said to do the walls in Mapei "Avalanche" and the lines would disappear because the color was almost dead on and the lines will be tiny. I left there and went to another store and they only carried Customs and the 2 men/owners there said right away-wall tile-bright white, bath floor-snow white and shower floor Platinum. Told me to set the wall AND the floor tile tight-unsanded on the floor and wall both. It took them about 30 seconds but neither store would let me bring home the little sticks so I still don't know what to do. None of them recommended any epoxy (not Spectralock or Opticolor) once they heard my tile guy hadn't done it. Said I did NOT want to be his test case for a glass shower floor. The second store said Customs "polyblend" grout already has mold and mildew inhibitors but will have to be sealed yearly unlike the spectralock. Geez, this is 2008, can't they just put the sealer in the grout already-lol. Please give me your advice! Thanks so much. (I swear this whole bathroom is giving me an ulcer! In CA, so had the hotmop done and while it didn't leak, now it won't drain because of a big puddle lower than the drain's weep holes-ack. Just had the drywall guy finish up and the painter came and did primer and all the tile is here and ready to go but now this-grrrr. Hopefully the hot mop guy will just come out and do more on that lower part but still, another hold up.)