Monrovia mom, I have a feeling you may be overthinking this. I have to preface this by saying this should be done to YOUR taste, not mine. But I'm thinking you may be disappointed afterward, doing what you're proposing. One stripe at say eye level, and maybe even a second at knee level if you really want to see a lot of the glass. But to have a stripe going horizontal, and another going vertical, and still more in the niche-- may become so busy as to be distracting. If you really want to do a lot of the glass, try something like this: As for doing the niche, and it showing as being off center, I think once you've had it there for a while, you won't even notice it, unless you're someone who is extremely detail oriented (read that as OCD :-)) Seriously-- overthink this, and it can drive you absolutely nuts. As for the water solubility of the glue, almost ALL glass is mounted with glue that will soften with water. Makes it a little touch on the installer, but not even close to impossible to work with. Once it's set, though, the thinset will hold it in place in spite of the mounting glue.

I'm grateful I read this, for I am considering installing large format wall tile onto drywall, that is in a non moisture area. I was concerned that the drywall would not be as strong as backerboard and could possibly cause structural failure. However MongoCT makes an excellent point, that large format tile with the same square footage as any other tile will share the same weight. "🎵 I can see clearly now, the rain is gone 🎵🎵👍👍

As you can tell, this is a redo. Please find out what type of experience your installed (I hesitate to use the title "tile installer") has with these types of sheets. Did s/he realize that each sheet will have to be trimmed and laid out before they are installed? Dis his/her quote include the extra 10-15% more TIME it takes to deal with these types of tiles? Did you discuss the final look (ie. you should never be able to tell these are laid in sheets)? And did you discuss the "flatness" of the surface that is required for these types of tiles? Most of this is the tile install itself, but a small (yet visually significant) portion is the surface it is sitting on. Some of this is probably being made worse because the wall it was being applied to did not have enough prep. What type of "prep" was stipulated/paid for in the quote?

Be careful that there's no blue undertones in the gray grout you choose. I thought we needed a blue undertone but what we chose turned out too blue. Tec Sterling sounds familiar as one we may have been considering when we thought we needed a blue tone. Is MP Mapei? I wouldn't use their product. I heard that tilers don't like it. I know that after my tiler got their rep involved in my issue, they pulled several colors off the shelf because of quality issues.