I'll go with option number one for two reasons. First, the bigger pieces will look better. Secondly, it's extremely rare that either surface-- the tub OR the ceiling-- is perfectly level. You WANT to be able to cut both in.

Please see the thread in Baths for additional details and comments. Thanks.

Lovely sense of style! Bravo! We investigated porcelain marble look-alike tile but we decided on real marble which we will have to care for without any acidic products. Beware that there is a repeating pattern in marble look-alike porcelain tile like (on wall paper which will give away the secret.) We found great deals on Amazon and at Lowes for Bianco Carrara subways, pencils, chair rails and floor and shower floor hexes (1/3 the price of tile stores). We found a gorgeous remnant for our shower bench at a marble and stone shop at an amazing price. I can't wait until it's done to post photos! But back to your house... it's gorgeous!

Thanks for your response! I assume that our plans did (though I'm not sure) and our plans were certainly approved so I don't understand whats happening here at all. My contractor is equally perplexed and says he's never heard of this type of installation nor of this being required. The wall in question isn't a shared wall, the other side of it is the exterior of our unit. We also had a permit from the beginning. For some more color on why things have taken so long: a good 7-8 weeks passed with no work being done because our property management company and HOA kept asking for additional documentation in order to approve the addition of a skylight AFTER the HOA president initially told us that she consulted the management and that we were in the clear to include the skylight in our plans (which we did and we began demo. When it was time to make the hole in the ceiling we reached out because we had a question about something and THAT was when they suddenly had a problem with it). The president AND the property manager were flakey, they'd take days to weeks to respond to our calls/emails and after requesting one thing, they'd come back a week later requesting something else, multiple times. It was ridiculous. We've also probably lost a total of 4 weeks due to various materials we needed on back-order. A couple more weeks lost to poor scheduling of workers by our contractor. His father who lives abroad also passed away during this job so he went away for 3 weeks and practically nothing got done while he was gone. The rest was BS from the city like this. I can't even begin to tell you the shenanigans we've had to go through with the city...waiting a week or two for an inspector to come only to have the inspector ding us for something that wasn't mentioned the previous time, etc. Oh and I forgot to mention the work was only for our master bath/closet and the guest bath (we only have 2 bathrooms total) and we've been living in the unit this whole time so work on both concurrently wasn't an option. Some luck we have, eh?