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

Well after chasing down the plumber since before christmas he is finally done roughing in everything he has to rough in. So we're moving ahead at a snail's pace. GC installed the shower base per instructions and it installed pretty easily. The subfloor was very level to start with and then tiny minor tweaks (pushing it down a little on one side etc) got the pan dead level. It looked pretty easy to install anyway (I was standing there while he did it). Feels pretty solid too. They recommend that you leave I think 1/2" all around when you install it? something like that, to make it easier to position in the walls. My gc just put placed the shower pan in the right position and screwed down the base plates for the stud walls around it so he was able to install it a little more tightly. I think it was much easier to just have it resting against the base plate rather than having to manipulate it with the whole wall framed out already. The thing is HEAVY and you have to watch for fiberglass splinters on the outside of the flange.

The cast iron shower receptors just replace your previous tiled shower floor and the pan/base that is under the tile. You will still have to decide what to do with the walls. I believe the smallest Kohler cast iron shower receptor is 48x36. Other manufactures may have different sizes. There are solid surface shower systems out there that have 3 wall solid surface surrounds and solid surface shower receptors. Corian and Swanstone are 2 brands that come to mind. They seem to have quite a few different sizes available. Tiles need to be attached to some type of cement backer board and there need to be some waterproofing system used along with it. Your plumber should be able to tell you all about it. There is a forum that is often recommended by GWers to answer tiling questions. Just google John Bridges Tile. There are also quite a few knowledgable contractors on this forum who may be chiming in. Good luck to you.

Update: The store swapped out the penny to polished hex in the same brand eating the additional cost. The installer removed the penny mosaic and prepared the flooring for the new mosaic. From what I see, there is no damage and was the project was completed in 1 day (they used quick set thinset). I cannot complain as the final result is beautiful. Thank you Skippack for the advice. I will show a photo after cleaning the dust off the tile.