Agreed. If I were doing the work, I'd add a 6-mil poly barrier between the framing and the the cement board...because it'd cost about $2 in materials and take 5 minutes of my time to do it. So why not, even though it's not required. That would omit the need for Redgard. If the corner bench is boxed out, then I prefer the membrane to cover the bench and the floor. I wouldn't want to build my pan, install the membrane, run the membrane up the walls, then on top of that box out a built-in bench and cover it with tile with the frame of the bench not being covered by the membrane. It could set up a scenario for long-term water damage to the bench's substrate. If you're talking about a wall-mounted corner bench, like the "Better Bench", then that just hangs on the wall, it does not have to be included under the membrane. An alternative which provides flexibility of use is a small teak bench. It can be in the shower, moved out of the shower, or moved around in the shower as needed. For pictures, they first have to be loaded onto a third-party hosting site like photobucket or it's equivalent. When your picture is loaded, right click on it and in the drop down menu left click on "Copy Image Location". Then come back here and type: <IMG SRC="paste your url here" WIDTH=400> and then paste your photo's location in between the quotation marks above in place of the red "paste your url here". I add the WIDTH=400 to restrict the width of the photo so the picture doesn't end up being so wide that it generates a scroll bar. You could change "400" to a larger or smaller number. Mongo

What a bathroom! What a neat tub and sink! Is this a vacation home or permanent? I'm not sure it matters but it would work better for a vacation home (psychologically anyway), but what about doing the tub/shower plumbing like an old clawfoot with shower added? Full surround shower curtain (or just two sides if you want to redo the tile nice and watertight I guess) with the showerhead piped openly from the lower plumbing and attached to the curtain rod? Wrong terms, I know, but maybe you know what I mean. LIke the one linked below (cheaper versions and different configurations are available--this was just a quick google.) I'd guess there used to be a thicker floor that was removed and nobody bothered to tell the toilet. If you're really being cheap, you could maybe get away with a lot of paint on the cabinets and curtains over the missing doors, but the cabinets would have to be sturdy enough to keep for that to work. Crisp white tile is inexpensive and you CAN put tile on a piece of plywood for the removable countertop. It'll be heavy enough you won't need to anchor it. Maybe you can DIY drywalling the ceiling. It's not a fun job, but it's a good bonding experience with whatever friends you can get to help. :) Here is a link that might be useful: example of ceiling mount shower curtain/tub-to-shower conversion

I’m not sure where your leak is coming from, I just wanted to tell our experience so you can gauge whether it might be a possibility in your case. One of our guest bathrooms had a leak that we originally assumed was from the shower. We hadn’t lived in the house for very long, and we hadn’t even used that shower yet when my sister came to visit. She stepped out of the shower and realized that water was squeezing up between the tiles when she stepped on them. Naturally, she informed us. My hubby had the entire bathroom completely gutted in half an hour! (It was a small bathroom with a Fiberglass shower, the tiles popped up like toast out of a toaster, and he’s just a beast... lol!) we see evidence of long term damage and provide my sister with another bathroom to use for the remainder of the visit. We didn’t start the bathroom remodel immediately, and when we did start it was slow going. We were very fortunate because we had barely started the remodel when we got another weather front move in with a whole lot of moisture... (It has been snowing a lot during her visit) and that’s when we realized the bathroom was leaking from another source! Hubby again ripped up the bathroom, and this time ripped out part of the wall that is on the exterior and that’s when we realized the leak was coming from outside. It took us a bit to figure out but we finally determined (with outside help) that it was because that wall was directly against an exterior chimney that had not been flashed properly. We left that bathroom unfinished for quite a while while we fixed the chimney problem, and waited for some more really good rain storms to make sure it was indeed dry before we finished our bathroom remodel. We were just fortunate that we have a lot of other bathrooms and this was just a guest bathroom. Anyways, I hope your issue isn’t something like that!

Count the pieces of board and the screws...removal and replacement of that purple drywall could be done in less time than it takes to dismiss the recommendations. At this point, I would remove the purple drywall so a tile pro could see what issues might be hidden underneath that drywall. Let the tile installer replace or shim the framing as needed, use his favorite waterproofing system and install the tile. Otherwise you risk having a future problem which could be caused by or blamed on preexisting conditions. It is cheaper and easier to backtrack now rather than wait until a problem shows up later.