The taping knife at a low angle makes an enormous difference, and I'm very grateful for that hint. When I tried to use the edge of my trowel [per schlutter video] I could see I was pulling a lot of the 'felt' off the backer. It also helped me to work in smaller sheets. More waste, yes, but I think you have to have a LOT of practice to hang those huge sheets like mongo does. Other mistakes I was making early on: -over working the thinset. Slap it up comb it out, leave every ridge tall and perfect. A hundred times better to have too much before you comb than too little. Too little, and the kerdi will never show you gray, no matter how you sweat. No bulges either, but definetly no thin spots. -Not paying attention to the direction of the comb. Your air bubbles will travel along the valleys you've made, and it's way better if you only have to move them 20 inches to the nearest edge rather than all the way from the ceiling to the floor [Again, Mongo can, but he has mad skills]. -Not paying attention to the principle of bedding top down, center out. I barely touch it with my hands before going to the tape knife. You don't want to block off the end of the air chanel and trap half a sheet worth of air under there. -Not paying attention to the direction of my knife. The fastest method [for me and possibly other dilettants] is to stroke the knife at a diagonal to the comb marks, top down, center out, pushing all the air before you with short, overlapping strokes. -Thinset needs to be pretty darn wet: Needs to stay put when combed, but should be soft and shiney. Seems like I've been using the full measure of water the bag calls for, plus about 10%. -50 lbs of thinset at a time is too much for an amatuer. Go with smaller bags or only mix half. Mind, those last two are at high elevation and low humidity: YMMV, which stands for 'your mud may vary', I think...

Thanks. I meant Versabond. I used the versabond and will give it a week before I regrout. I can't find Ditraset near me but that would be my first choice.

For excatly the reasons terriks mentioned, that's why I use Kerdi. Kerdi gets applied to the shower surfaces then the tile goes right over the Kerdi. With a Kerdi shower, the only thing that can get wet is the tile the grout and the thinset. With a typical cement board shower, the cement board as well as the deck mud below the tile can become saturated with water too. In today's tightly built houses I prefer to control any moisture the best as I can, which is why I use Kerdi. Kerdi can go over drywall or cement board. In the thread you linked to I used Kerdi over cement board. It just as easily could have been drywall. And yes, drywall is a code-approved method if it's covered with Kerdi. It's not that covering cement board with Kerdi is waste of money. It's the willingness to spend an extra couple hundred dollars for Kerdi that will give you a shower superior to a tile-over-cementboard shower. Remember, to do a tile over cement board shower you need two layers of deck mud and a 40-mil membrane on the shower floor. Plus you need a vapor barrier behind the cement board. With a Kerdi shower you only need one layer of mud on the floor (or a preformed Kerdi Tray on the floor) and something on the walls, either drywall or cement board. Then Kerdi over that. So there's a bit of give and take there. You pay for the Kerdi membrane and drain. But you shave a few dollars and a bit of labor off by not having to do a few steps involved when using a CPE membrane. It really just comes down to embracing a new method or sticking with the old. I warrant my Kerdi Showers for 10 years. What does your contractor offer on his?

Nope no worries in letting either of them sit. Do consider wetting the deck mud prior to Kerdi, so the dry mud doesn't prematurely suck all the moisture out of your thinset. Spritzing it with water in a spray bottle will work fine. Kerdi is polyethylene, and as such it will suffer from long-term UV exposure. So if there is a window that will allow strong sunlight to hit the Kerdi, it might be wise to put a curtain over the window if your delay will be lengthy. Mongo