since posting this i have found another supplier in the philippines who has been much more responsive and available to answer questions (on the phone and in perfect english...). the product is more expensive, starting at about $35 per sq for hammer shell and going up to about $60 per sq for mother of pearl (more for accent tiles). our tile will be no joints, mesh mounts for walls and porcelain backed for wet areas (inside shower). they also ship free samples. good luck! contact: john romain exclusivetiles@gmail.com www.eleganceofliving.com

Joe, do you need a tub? Or would a walk-in or roll-in shower work best? I'm in agreement with wisco-girl. I just did a shower for an MS customer about 3 months ago. A couple of items while I await your response, and these are geared towards a fully accessible roll-in shower: 1) Use a movable seat instead of a built-in bench inside the shower. 2) Grab bar guidance can be found on ADA sites. You can shuffle the locations slightly depending on your shower configuration and your wife's abilities, but their recommended locations are pretty good. 3) For the shower head, have a hand-held unit on a bar. Most bars are not certified for grab bar use, but there are units that are. I used an Alsons ADA handheld. Looks nice, and the vertical bar is an actual grab bar and the height adjustment is an easily manipulated lever. Use the longest hose you can find. 4) If the grab bars will not be screwed directly into a wall stud or solid 2-by blocking installed between the studs, I prefer to use "Wing-It" anchors. I can do chin-ups on those things. Kerdi? From the studs to tile, you're looking at: a) drywall or cement board, the seams between panels do not have to be thinsetted or taped. I personally prefer cement board (wonderboard or durock) but you can use regular old drywall. If using drywall I recommend 5/8" drywall. b) thinset and Kerdi over the drywall or cement board c) thinset and tile over the Kerdi d) grout With accessible showers, I recommend a deck mud base versus the Kerdi foam trays. You can use the foam tray, I simply find deck mud easier to shape to the shower sizes that I build. If a deck mud base, I staple plastic sheeting to the floor. Then set expanded metal lathe over the plastic and tack it in place, just enough so it doesn't flop around. Pack deck mud and set the drain, with the proper slope (1/4" per foot usually) from the walls to the drain. Once the deck mud has cured, Kerdi over it, then tile. If using a Kerdi Foam tray, thinset the tray to the floor, then kerdi over the tray. Easy. Here's a Kerdi thread from a few years ago. This is Kerdi over cement board on the walls, and Kerdi over sloped deck mud on the floor. Might not be the same methods you chose to use, but it shows a few techniques. Lastly, the curb. you need 2" of vertical drop from the top of the curb to the shower drain. Floor pitch needs to be between 1/4" per foot and 1/2" per foot. You can usually get an inch or so simply from the sloped shower floor. So you may still need an inch or so of elevation at the shower threshold. You can do a standard curb with square edges, or a roll-over hump. The hump is sort of like a speedbump. An inch or so of vertical over several inches of horizontal, gentle enough to roll over in a wheelchair is need be. There are also flexible "pop-up" curbs that can be glued to the tile at the threshold. They stick up a couple of inches, and being made out of flexible material they can be rolled right over. I'm not sure of their durability. Anyhow Joe, more than you asked for. And you thought YOUR post was long. lol Oh, and for grab bars, etc, look at a website called "grab bar specialists."

Kendog-- As to the first two choices, I think either one would aork aestheitcally speaking. It would really be a matter of which look YOU like best. We're planning to use pencil rail around our niches as well as above and below the stone and glass liner. Would it look best with pencil around the window as well or could we just overlap the tile there? I would NEVER just overlap the tiles. Being you're going to use the pencil liner for trimming the niche, I don't think it would look out of place if you were to trim out the window as well. The pencil trim has a higher profile than the tile. Should all of it be cut down at the back to make it more flush with the tile if we use it to cover the edge where the tile meets the wall? No-- it's MADE to have that kind of protruding profile. Trim will be needed on the opposite wall where the half wall ends or maybe we could try to bullnose this with a router? The color of the tile edge nearly matches the color of the tile face. Nearly isn't close enough. Either it's exact, or it's not good enough. If you'd rather not use the pencil liners there, I'd use one of Schluter's bullnosing strips. as for the curb, you could always use a marble threshold, thereby elliminating the need for bullnose. Not sure about yours, but most curbs, after backerboard and tile, are about 5 1/2" wide, and a 6" wide threshold set flush to the tile on the outside of the curb, will give you just enough of an overhang on the inside to provide for a nice drip edge. This will do a couple of things for you. First, it'll provide another layer of protection for the curb. Secondly, it'll provide for a nice flat surface for the shower door to sit on, and third, it looks alot nicer than two back to back bullnose pieces. Like this: The floor is about 18 square feet. Do you think it would work well if we cut our wall tile into 4 inch squares to use for the floor? Could we just sand the edges to make them smooth or would we need to use a router? You COULD cut them down, but if the floor isn't perfectly flat, you could end up with uncomfortable edges under your feet. Again, unless the face and edge of the tile look exactly the same, you don't want to use ANY kind of abraiding process (router, sand paper, grinder, polishing wheels) that will show in the finished product. Our tile is rectified porcelain and we'd like to use 1/16 grout lines if possible. If it's rectified, that shouldn't be a problem.

It used to be that 1/16th was called out for rectified tiles. With the new specs for manufacturing, you start getting more variations in tile size. Even in rectified, believe it or not. The new installation recommendation, which has actually been around for a few years, is to have the grout line 3-times the size of the variation within the tiles. This usually comes down to an 1/8th inch grout line. Lippage can also be an issue based on the pattern. A stacked pattern might not show lippage whereas a running bond could. The larger the tile, the more chance you have of lippage with offset patterns. That's all due to the tiles not being perfectly flat. A slight warp, pillow, or pringing (like the pringles potato chip). The grout needs depth. Otherwise it'll just pop out. So a 1/32nd gap with a beveled edge, you may not have durability, because the installer may not pack the joint (if there even is an actual joint) with grout. So: Not to dump on the guy who plans on going 1/32nd...but I'd nix that. Someone who tells me they're going with 1/32nd, I think they're just going to lightly butt the tiles together and get whatever grout penetration they can. And it'll likely be nothing more than topical grout with very little actually packing whatever gap there would be between the tiles. With the new specs, 1/8th inch is the new standard. You could still go 1/16th if the tiles and pattern allow for it, the installer is comfortable with it, and it's called out in the specs...but I'd not advocate going less.