No, no premixed thinset is allowed! Use dry powder and mix it yourself. Either buy modified powder, or buy unmodified and modify it with an admix. Mapei, Custom, or Laticrete all make fine product, they are all available in the box stores. I think HD carries Custom and Lowes carries Laticrete and Mapei. Behind the subway you can use gray thinset, it's a little less expensive than white. Behind the glass I always use white thinset so the glass color doesn't get muddled by gray thinset behind it. The amount of "muddle" depends on how translucent the glass is. Marble is often best done with a marble thinset, especially when used in large areas, like a marble floor. You only have trim pieces so it may not be that critical. What is critical is to use white thinset for your marble. Were you to use gray thinset behind marble, marble, being porous, could "wick" the gray through and you could get discoloration with your marble pieces. Even when using white, realize that the marble may discolor a bit after installation. This is usually just moisture being absorbed into the marble, and after it fully cures/dries the marble should return to its original color. If this works for you, just do the subways first with regular gray modified thinset. Let that cure for a day. Then come back and set your decorative marble and glass with a white modified thinset. Did the glass tile come with installation instructions, as far as techniques to install them? There are a few tricks to make things easier. Too thick of a bed of thinset and you can get excessive squeeze out between the pennies. Too little and you can get voids behind the pennies, the more translucent the glass, the worse that would be. Best, Mongo

I agree, I don't like version 2 where you alternated. Did you leave those or pull them? Here is a picture of mine to help me explain the situation: So I can't use the technique of having the bullnosed pieces sit across the front of the wall and kill into them. I would like to have the bullnose be on the the long wall and have the tiles on the little wing wall kill into them. Because subway is staggered (not the proper name, but I'm sure you know what I mean), every other piece along the corner will be a half piece. Daltile doesn't make a 3x3 bullnose, so we'll need to cut down 3x6 bullnose. So the top piece will be a 3x6 with a bullnose on the 3 side. The next piece will be a 3x6 bullnose on the 3 side, but cut to 3x3 and set with the bullnose on the corner. So the right side of it will be a cut edge. So should I butt a factory edge up to that cut edge? Won't that look bad? (BTW, when I say "should I", I really mean my GC's very competent tile guys.) As always, my thanks! Anita

Blondelle, it's the edge meeting at right angles. I've got a few of those - a couple are on half-tiled walls, so I've got to go around the corner *and* finish off nicely on the top edge (and top corner). Then there are a couple of corners that also transition from half-height to full-height in the tub/shower. The "cuarto de cana" (quarter round) and "angulo cuarto de cana" (quarter round corner - can't do the tildes!) pieces, along with some bullnose, would solve the problem for me, but I'm not sure I can get those pieces for my preferred tile (and possibly not even for my less-preferred tile) in time for work to start on 9/29. Bill, I understand how to use bullnose to finish off one side of a corner edge and have the other side butt into it... but how do I finish off the top of the corner when it's a half-tiled wall? Do I just miter the bullnose strips along the top? Can I miter the (possibly glass) border tile beneath the bullnose, and then just use the vertical bullnose/butt technique down the rest of the side? (Hope that made sense... I'm just learning this stuff!)

Here's a pic of an outside corner in our guest bath: (I don't have a close-up photo of the corner handy, but if you can zoom in on this photo, you can get a good idea how it looks.) I'm sure one of the tile pros can tell you different and best ways to do this; I can just tell you what we did. Our contractor miter cut the tiles, then slightly softened the sharp edge with a sanding block of some sort. We had talked about using a bullnose tile, but I didn't love the edge finish of the bullnose on these tiles; the cut tiles came out well and I'm much happier with it this way than the way the bullnose would have looked. -- Eric