Everything has to slope down to the shower drain. The traidtional way to do this is to have the shower pan shaped like a bowl. You can't bend a tile to be bowl shaped. Only small tiles can follow that contour of the bowl. The only way you can use larger tiles on a shower floor is if you have an X cut shower with the drain in the middle and each of the sections being flat with an angle at the cuts. Or you can do a trench drain, but that's considerably more money and time to get done correctly because it alters how you need the structural elements done at the construction phase. For a budget build, I wouldn't recommend either as very budget friendly. They need a tile expert, and will cost you a lot more than going with a standard mosaic. And, you'd have to have a textured tile for the floor if you did choose to do this. Otherwise you've created a slip hazard. That's another reason that mosaics work better in a shower. The smaller tiles have a lot of grout surface for traction. You can use a polished mosaic for a shower, but if you did larger tiles, they'd have to be honed, and even then, it might still be too slippery.

Thank you for the compliments on my blog. I have to give most of the credit to my DD. She set it up for me and taught me how to blog. I am enjoying it. Magothyrivergirl, I am giving a link to the ruler connector. I haven't tried it yet, but will this afternoon. Linda OH Here is a link that might be useful: Quilt Ruler Connector

Random placement: I haven't had that problem, but I always make sure my curser is at the bottom of the page when I start to upload a photo. If you've clicked outside the message box, the curser sends the photo (or link) to the top of the message (or where ever the curser is in the message.)

Mortgage rates are a lot more complicated than the Fed rate, they are going to move a bit but they should settle down pretty soon. Many people believe that home mortgage rates and even the prime rate are simply based on the Fed rate which is really not true. The Federal funds rate certainly influences the prime but not linearly. I am going to oversimplify this a lot but mortgages are a lot like any inventoriable product. You buy from a supplier at a set price and you sell to customers. Certainly the amount you have to pay sets a floor on the amount you charge but it doesn't set the price. Supply and demand sets the price. This gets more complicated by banks selling the mortgages, almost all banks are currently selling mortgages because they don't pay enough to keep. Banks are actually adversely affected by interest rate hikes also. They have 8 years of record low loans that are locked in, and the proceeds from those loans are used to pay depositors. That is essentially how banks work, they pay money to depositors and mark that up for loans. The interest rate spread is essential for making money. Alternately, they can sell the loans to a third party and get paid an origination fee. The kicker to this idea is that banks have to have loans. If the interest rate moves up enough that buyers decide not to pursue a loan (or buy a home) then the banks are screwed. The second kicker is - as loans start paying higher interest and stocks slow down (see bottom note) there is more demand for mortgages from businesses that buy mortgages. So competition for the better mortgage rates as an investment actually drives the rate down a bit. TL,DR: Typically, we see rates go up and then settle down a bit before they move up again. This needs to happen fairly slow or it creates a shock that grinds things to a halt. I believe you are safe for the next couple of years. Frankly, I would bet interest money will still be stupid low for the next 5 to 10 years, but the crystal ball gets a little cloudy at that distance. Note: I have seen half a dozen talking heads on the news giving reasons that the Fed is raising interest rates. I can't tell you whether they are just oversimplifying it for the public or they are really that bad, but they are mostly wrong. The Fed is currently very concerned about the PE ratios in the stock market. They are way too high and, actually, way above the danger zone. The Fed needs to slow the stock market down, they have needed to for a while but didn't do anything during the election to be safe. The market responded to Trump's election very differently than they thought and now they have to act. The primary reason for the rate hike is that they have to get investors out of the stock market and into the bond and debt market. There are other reasons, such as employment and the economy that have an impact but many of those are offset by artificially low international rates.