Hi, Thanks for the reply. Had I known limestone was such a nightmare I never would have chosen it but the bathroom designer said it was fine as long as sealed properly. With regards to the installation/construction the only thing I can tell you us that it involved a wooden frame on a concrete (old concrete) floor, they used some sort of waterproof boards and a paint on blue rubberised/waterproofing membrane. The tiles are sealed with Lithofin. The pitch of the floor is good, ie all the water drains to the centre well. Husband thinks we should just let it dry out and then seal all the grout lines and the broken tile with silicone. The installers are confident that the waterproofing underneath is tight but surely can't be good to gave water sitting under the tiles all the time? Installers on holiday until 16th - have already emailed them with photos. I guess my questions are: 1) Is it actually doing any harm - ie could we carry on as is? 2) Would the drying out and siliconing work? Currently only the changes of plane and the axis radiating out from the drain are siliconed - the rest is normal grout (which has cracked). 3) Would it gave been better NOT to seal the tiles at all (so water could dry out through them)? 4) If the installers were to rip up the floor and replace how horrific would this be? Would all he wall tiles be wrecked too? Could the glass shower frame be removed without too much damage? I am pretty sure they said ripping up the floor would break the waterproofing. 5) Should we re-tile the floor with something other than limestone, eg marble or ceramic mosaic? I can't tell you how much I wish I had chosen another material. :-(

Thanks, Bill. I talked to my contractor this morning and he said: 1. He used silicone at the corners of the sheet rock. He also said the reason he doesn't like to use caulk at the corners is that even though it is supposed to be the same color as the grout, it really isn't, plus the caulk will crack if the building moves just like grout cracks. I asked him about grout behind the caulk and he said he recommends keeping the bathroom dry by using a squeegie/towel where needed, particularly along the top of the tub. The grout looks so nice I guess I'll wait to see if it cracks. It probably will as the roof needs more work and I guess I'll caulk at that time. 2 and 3. There isn't grout at the tub line. It just looks like it as the grout is the same color as the empty space. (That's what I get for looking at it at night.) 4. OK 5. Tub reglazing was put last on the schedule so that it wouldn't get damaged during the other stages. I am going to have them cover all of the walls up to the tile line, and the floor, with plastic.

Okay-- here's the thing-- I've had people ask about taking it even another step further, and replacing the grout with epoxy grout. I'll tell you the same thing I told them. You will NOT stop movement where it's occurring. You can only take it into account. Most grout already contains some kind of acrylic polymer, so it's a dead issue, but just for the sake of argument, let me follow this where you were taking it (assuming you're looking to make the joints harder and tougher to crack). If you accept the given that I put forth, that you're not going to stop movement, then you'll understand when I say that movement, just like electricity or water, will find the path of least resistance. Right now, that's the grout joint. Now, the only way to make the grout joint hard enough where it won't crack is to make it harder than the tile. But if you do that, guess what's gonna crack NOW? Remember-- you won't stop the movement. You need to find the source of the problem and fix it, or it'll keep coming back, and sooner or later, it's going to start getting worse.

The reason to remove the grout is so the silicone has a place to grab and hold without being rubbed off later during cleaning. Hire someone who will remove the grout first. You can get grout matching 100% silicone in sanded, unsanded, shiny, and matte in over 400 grout matching colors from our buds at www.ColorRiteInc dot com. Tell Laura we sent you.