I changed the entrance of my shower tub. The panel board was moldy; water was getting in between the top tiles and the panel board. the joint was not well sealed. I put new everything for the entrance, even a membrane between the plywood and the tiles. However, it seems to leak from the wall now. Water is coming out of the wall outside the shower tub. Would it be the grout, tiles...? Tiles and grout are probably 20+ yrs old ( turquoise tiles). I tried to put some ready grout ( in a tube), but it still leaks! Calking is well done. Should I remove the old grout and put new one everywhere? Thanks for your help!

1) You can brace or block the joists per standard construction, but what might be easier is to strap the bottom edges of the joists. Typical strapping is done with a 1x3, but a lot of times I'll simply use a 2x4. Run a 2x4 across the bottoms of the joists, perpendicular to the joists. Add a dab of PL adhesive and use a couple of screws at each fastening point. You have specific needs here, so spacing the 2x4s as you need will work very well. What it does is if a single joist wants to deflect downward, the strapping transfers that load to the adjacent joists as well. So it's good as a floor stiffener. For a washer/dryer set up, it also dampens the entire floor platform in terms of the possibility of the spin cycle causing the floor to reverberate. The strapping serves the same purpose as cross-bracing or solid blocking between the joists. It's code-approved, though code only requires it for 2x12 joists, with the strapping being made of 1x3, and the strapping spaced every 8'. The strapping is more effective long-term than bracing or blocking, due to fitment, installation, and shrinkage issues. 2) Do the whole floor. There are only restrictions on maximum spacing (every 8'). So if you make it every 2', or 3', or 4', no worries. Strapping is also easier because you're not wrestling with any of the utilities that take up space between the joists. 3) Your joists span 8-1/2'. For simplicity, why not do run three pieces of strapping? One at 1/4 span, one at half-span, the other at 3/4 span. Just a little over 2' spacing. 4) 3/4" ply over the diagonal boards is plenty. It does not have to be exterior grade. 5) Your floor sandwich can be made up of: -Tile -Ditra -Floor heat wires encased in SLC (no wires under the washer/dryer area through, see comments later) -Plywood underlayment covered with SLC primer -Diagonal plank subfloor -joists I usually advocate a small platform under the washer/dryer stack. It's more for damping than load spreading. I've done sandwiches of plywood/cement_board/plywood, or plywood/MLV/plywood. MLV is mass-loaded vinyl. Screw through the top layer of ply, through the middle material, and into the bottom layer of plywood to secure it together. Or just use construction adhesive. I drill a hole through the middle of the platform sandwich to accommodate the flood pan's drain line. I usually put a square of rug pad on the floor. The inexpensive, maybe 1/8" thick, rubbery mesh or open weave type of rug pad. It acts as a bit of a damper, but also holds the platform in place. I then set the platform on the rug pad. Then put the flood pan over the platform with the drain plumbed through the hole in the platform. Then set the washer in place and the dryer on top of that. I recommend you tile the entire floor, but again, no heating wires under the location of the washer. You'll be putting the sandwich platform on top of the tile in that area, and the insulative value of that platform can shorten the life span of the heating element. Pricklypear, the Ditra-XL is simply thicker than regular Ditra. It really wasn't designed for a specific tile size. It's sole purpose is to allow the thickness of "Ditra plus tile" to match up with the thickness of a typical hardwood floor.

One post mentioned if I install on top of the plywood, there needs to be a layer of thinset under the mesh..is this the same thing as putting the mat on the plywood, and then troweling on thinset? Or do I need to put a layer on first and let that dry, and then attach the mesh with another layer of thinset? The only system I know of that needs to have thinset under the system before you put it down over the plywood Nuheat. You need to trowel down fresh thinset, lay in the mat (which is basically the same mesh as cheesecloth with the wire running thru it), and then thinset over the top, so that the mat is basically sandwiched in the fresh thinset. I'm not Mongo, but I'll answer anyway. A wet room is a bathroom where the entire floor is waterproofed so that no curb is needed for the shower. It's basically for handicapped showers, and the entire bathroom floor is more or less the shower pan. Is anything bathroom a wet room. Usually only the shower. Is Ditra overkill for a bathroom floor If you don't have a movement problem, or if you don't need to knoch the height down that extra 1/8" that the Ditra gives you in place of cement board, then 1/4" cement board should more than suffice for most ceramic jobs.

Lovely! I like the classic white tile and porcelain and how you used furniture pieces in the bathroom. I love that the storage at the end of the tub has pull-outs that can be reached from the toilet. Your custom sink and backsplash and counter are unique and beautiful. Yours may be the first bathroom sink I have seen in which a small or medium dog could be washed! That is a good thing! I showed your pictures to my DH because I am thinking of classic tiled walls with a chair rail for when we redo our bath in a couple of years. He liked it! I was expecting him to say, "too old fashioned." He did not, he said it looked nice. From him, nice is a compliment. He even liked your rows of listello. I was just at the Tile Shop's site the other day looking at the Hampton tiles because someone was selling some on Craigslist. I am hoping to do as you did and get what I can cheaper there, and fill in the rest from the store. I can see that you worked very hard to secure all of your materials - and then cut the floor tiles to size and culled the Hampton tiles, too! You succeeded very well in getting the look you wanted while saving money along the way. Congratulations, and thank you for the pictures and great detail and supply list.