Your best bet is to grout the accent first, making sure to leave the joint that runs directly above and below it, open to be grouted when you grout the field tile. If you tape anything off during this first part of it, just tape the end of each perpendicular grout joint where it runs up to the accent. The border joint you can clean out with a utility knife after you're done grouting. Once the accent is grouted, let it dry over night, and then tape off the edges of it, being careful not to let it run off and cover part of the border joints. In the case of the pencil liner, just put a liece of tape over each joint in the liner, and then take a utility knife (with a new blade for a crisp clean cut) and cut off the excess tape, off the edge of the liner. Then you grout the field, pull the tape, and WAA LAA! :-) Matter of fact, I'll be doing that tomorrow myself, on a kitchen backsplash I just did for a friend-- black grout in the accent stripe, and a tan grout called chamois for the tumbled stone field.

thanks jjaazzy! i too finally got to speak with john yesterday. my uneasiness about ordering from a source on another continent was put to rest. he is sending me three samples of the hammershell tile. i wanted to see the square and the rectangle patterns so he is making them up for me. the backing is porcelain and i knew about the coating from the website. so, for the hammershell tile the price is $28 US per square and he told me the shipping for 80 sq (my guesstimate) would be $300 US via UPS. i was planning to use it on the floor as a trim/border for marble or porcelain under the tub so it wouldn't be in a high traffic area. i had my suspicions about it's softness. i think by the tub would be safe though, just as long as we don't bring it out too far. i guess i'll make my decisions about that as we get a little closer. that's very strange about the shimmer under the halogens. i wonder if it would make a difference if viewed from another light source? i'll have to see it when it comes in. we don't have any lighting yet (they've just gotten to our roof) so i think i'll take it to a lighting showroom. THANK YOU for the heads up! in the meantime, let me know how you do with shelltile.net. i'll have to look them up as i haven't come across them before. i'll let you know when my samples come in. ...oh, and which of the tile are you looking to buy? thanks again!

Sanded grout, which has...tada...sand in it...is used in grout joints 1/8" and wider. The sand is a bulk filler. It minimizes shrikage cracking as the grout cures. The particles of sand will often give sanded grout a rougher texture than unsanded. Unsanded grout is made of a finer particulate, no sand filler, in general it is smoother. But it's for joints smaller than 1/8". While there are varying degrees of "smooth", sanded doesn't always have to be rough-rough like coarse sand paper. Some of the finer particles can be washed away when too much water, or too heavy a hand with the sponge, is used during clean up. Or the finer particles can be dissolved away by acid cleaners, leaving a rougher surface. Epoxies will be smooth. I'm not terribly familiar with Tec. But I've never had a problem with Laticrete.

I'd prefer that more grout had been left in the joints. They look dished out a bit too much, where too much grout was removed during the cleanup phase. I'd have preferred the grout to be more flush with the face of the tile. Looking closely at the first two photos, the darkened grout lines are all parallel to one another. In the first photo you can see the wet grout lines are all parallel to the edge of the drain. That leads me to believe that the "uphill" edges of the tiles are acting like mini dams and holding water, they are preventing water from easily flowing downhill to the drain. The second closeup photo, you see the same effect. All the damp grout lines are again parallel to one another. Again, to me that reflects a drainage issue. Not necessarily with the amount of floor pitch, but with the grout lines being so dished out that they hold water and slow drainage. Marble is porous and can absorb water. With the grout lines being a bit too raked out, the edges of the marble hexes are exposed. Water held against the tile edge can lead to absorption into the marble. The crack in the grout in that second photo, you also wrote that there are other cracks. That's usually a sign of too much water used in the grout mix, or that sanded grout should have been used instead of unsanded. Unsanded should be used in joints less than 1/8" wide. Cracks can also indicate movement in the floor, but that shouldn't be an issue with a properly set Kerdi Tray. As far as him having used a preformed Kerdi-Tray, if he did, it appears that is was certainly cut down in an awkward manner. The drain is no where near centered in the shower. So if he did some filling here and there with mud or thinset to even out the floor pitch or edge elevations, that could have be part of the problem. But that's supposition on my part. About the only other thing I could question is that often times with small tiles, when the sheets are set into the thinset, thinset can ooze up between the hex tiles and partially fill the grout lines. That thinset needs to be cleaned out so the grout lines can be completely filled with grout. If it's not, you can get uneven thicknesses of grout, think of it as a veneer of grout over a blob of thinset. That can result in uneven water absorption, the grout cracking, etc. All that aside...with this being your second go-around, he should have install the sloped Kerdi Tray and thinsetted it to the subfloor. Then he should have set the Kerdi drain. Then he should have thinsetted Kerdi Membrane (an orange colored sheet material) over the Kerdi Tray, then tiled on the Kerdi Membrane. I'd be interested in how he tied the Kerdi Membrane in with the wall membrane IF he used Kerdi Membrane over the Kerdi Tray. Best. Mongo