How can we do a nice tiled bathroom without going over the top on $$$$? Buy what's available in stock at Lowes or Home Depot. They have a lot of nice choices in tiles, with coordinating sets so you can have one size for the shower floor, another for the shower walls, another for the bathroom floor, plus accent pieces and edge pieces. I've read tile floors leak and we should do cultured marble for the base of the shower - where do we find that? That's not true at all. First of all, the shower will need to be waterproofed. Here in California, they do tar. You would call for that service. After the tar is set, there is a water test that gets done to make sure it is watertight. (This is done by an inspector if you are doing this with permits.) I like using smaller tile on the floor of the shower - smaller is better for a slip-proof floor. If you are DIYing most of this and pulling permits, get a copy of the local codes from your town. That will help you in how to design the shower properly, with curbs etc.

Because these things seem to go together like The Patriots and Super Bowl trophies I'll ask the next question. If you watched any of the shower tile installation, did they use premixed "mastic" straight from a bucket, or did it start as a dry powder then get mixed with a liquid to stick the tiles onto the walls? Tile and grout are pourous materials. No amount of sealer will ever change that. As such, water will get behind the tile and thru the glue that holds the tile and onto whatever substrate (in your case greenboard) you've got. Greenboard is simply sheetrock with a special paper facing. It will eventually fall apart with repeated wettings. Like the kind you get in a shower. That's also the problem with "mastic". Premixed mastic is super easy to work with, but it's water solluble. Dry mixed thinset sets by chemical reaction, mastic dries by air. I'm sure Mongo will be back, but my guess is he's probably working. I'm also guessing that your not real comfortable with what he left you thinking, so I figured I'd give you some rudimentary info to hopefully answer some questions. Unfortunately, if that shower gets heavy use that greenboard's going to fail. How long will that take, I don't know. A quick trip over to the John Bridge forum and a search using greenboard and/or failure will get you plenty of reaffirming info...unfortunately most of it won't make you real happy. What would I do in your shoes? With a little help from our resident consigliere's Mongo and Bill V (I'm sure they'd both be more than happy to send you the IRC codes forbidding greenboard), call the tile guys and let them know their work is substandard and you expect it fixed. When they protest...and they will...hand them your documentation and have them fix it.

Thank you, IRhuel and rufinorox! Emmi--Thank you! We had another full bath in the house, so showering wasn't a problem, thank Goodness. The entire bathroom was gutted in March down to the studs, then the ceiling was bumped up and a closet door reorientated. Then it was sheetrocked and tiled(walls and shower). After that, the fixtures were put in. The bathroom wasn't ready for complete use until October. It took a while, but it was mostly my fault because I took my time researching and making decisions on products since I was on a tight budget. I thought I would go insane trying to choose the tile!

holligator, here is a link to Tile Supply in FL. You can browse around their site and see some of the options on tile and coping. A lot of builders do renovations these days. Try searching for swimming pool renovation companies in your area. If still not coming up with anything, just call builders to see if they do it or recommend someone that does. At some point, you are going to have to get some of them out to look at it and give you some estimates. If you haven't done a renovation before, make sure you are sitting down when you get the numbers. Most renovation virgins are shocked at what it costs. Common response-Geez, that's more than I paid for the pool. Of course, things change and prices go up. It is generally a better idea to do a renovation on everything at once. It may not be in the budget, but you may end up paying to do things twice. For example, draining and refilling the pool each time. The renovation guys can make these recommendations and give you some options. Here is a link that might be useful: Tile Supply Inc.