flyleft, thanks! The sink is from Sonia, in the 31.5" (?) size. We had the vanity built by a local guy, a slightly adapted version of a Sonia vanity. We liked the look of the sink so much, that we ordered two more of them in the 24" width (length) for our upstairs bathrooms. Sonia also makes the sink in a 39" version. FYI, if anyone plans on ordering one, make sure you specify one with overflow holes (if that's important to you).

You could fill in the 'short' space with a board of appropriate thickness, glue the Corian to the board and cover the top and front edge of the board with some dimensional moulding like cove mould. Or, depending on how tall the Corian side splashes are, perhaps you could rip some material off the Corian and laminate the strips to the top & front edge (doesn't have to be a solid lamination) and live with a reduced height splash. This would be my preferred approach. Another idea--the side splashes could be used to make the counter longer (edge glued) and use something else for the side splashes or just use the backsplash, omit the sidesplash and caulk where the Corian dies into the wall.

I recently finished a remodel which included master and guest bath with lots of tile work. In my experience, the person who actually installed the tiles did NOT frame the shower or do the waterproofing. That part was done by a other tradespeople who were hired by the GC and he was responsible for the quality of all of the work. Since GC worked with the same people for numerous jobs they were all familiar with each other so the person who actually installed the tile would be comfortable with whatever prep work was done for him. I imagine this is how good GC's operate with their trusted skilled tradespeople. As others have posted, skilled tile workers are in huge demand and so some of the finish work had to be fit in with other jobs the tile worker was doing - e.g. my hood in the kitchen was delayed and so the backsplash behind the cooktop and hood couldn't be done with the rest of the tile work as had been originally scheduled. The line items on my agreement with the GC included everything EXCEPT the actual tiles. Those were supplied and paid for by me - but I selected and ordered them through my designer so there weren't going to be issues regarding the quality of the tiles. Also, beyond the actual price of the tiles, the size and style of what you select is going to impact the actual price of the installation as some styles require more skill and labor costs will be higher. And as others have written, tile prices range in price from inexpensive to the stratosphere. Mine were $45 per square foot for 3" x 6" subway tiles and I had accent marble mosaic which was $145 per square foot :-). When my job was sent out to be bid, it included plans and diagrams for everything including the design plan and specifications for all the tile work so that would have been used by GC (in consultation) with his skilled people to determine what the bid was. A tiled shower is probably one of the aspects of home remodeling which gets screwed up the most which is why you are getting a lot of warnings from people. You should definitely get recommendations regarding your GC. I visited two places he was working on to get a sense of the quality of his work. And my contract included provisions that theoretically protected me as much as possible - and when I say theoretically, it's because any homeowner is screwed if it comes down to suing on a contract because the job has gone that bad. In terms of shower building, I am FAR from an expert but I spent some time and got excellent advice from people on this forum regarding waterproofing showers and so I was able to ask fairly intelligent questions. I also took pictures of the shower being built at various stages. And luckily I live in a place that has very serious inspectors and so the shower was inspected three times - including the 24 hour flood test so I was reasonably certain that between relying on the quality of the GC and his trusted workers and the inspectors, I had a first class shower.

I recently finished a job that was similar - I had to tile and grout the side walls, install the vanity, then tile and grout around the top.