A picture would help :)

Hi tmnca! One thing to think about with the Kohler shower pans is whether you may ever be using a shower stool with legs. If you were to get a longer shower bench, the Salient may cause problems because the oval really does have quite a bit of "curb" to it, as shown in Badgergal's photo of her son's shower. With a small shower stool set in the center of the shower, it is fine. If you ever need a longer shower stool, the Bellweather gives you a surface not impeded with the raised oval. I does, however, have a slant to the overall shower floor, so that must be taken into account. I have seen the Bellweather in person. It is a non-slip surface. It almost felt like a surface that would make me trip - catching my foot if I did not pick it up and step. Like if I dragged the foot, it would catch and I would trip and fall. It was a funny feeling to the bottom, and I wondered how it would feel when wet. It was NOT going to feel slippery, though! As for tile in a shower floor, the other reason to have small tiles (besides the grout lines giving traction), is that the small tiles allow the tile layer to better cope with the slant toward the drain. Larger tiles only allow you to slant in one direction. The smaller the tile, the better it is for following contours on a floor that is flowing to a drain from all directions.

I think the best thing I learned is to be incredibly explicit on the front end about your expectations--put it in writing and say it several times--and then to monitor the work carefully day-to-day. I was too trusting that they were doing what I'd asked in the early days. The lion's share of our issues were around the shower construction, and that one is tricky. I'd done a lot of research to understand how it was supposed to be built and waterproofed and had a very clear sense of what we wanted, but what the GC's worker ended up doing was problematic in a lot of ways. The GC was very insistent that it was "how they always do things" (and for all I know, it was--when I circled back to the friends who had recommended the GC, they shared that they had no idea how their bathrooms had been waterproofed). In our area, the shower pan, walls, and waterproofing are all inspected so when I explained how they had been built, the City issued a corrections notice and we worked with the GC and City until we settled on a fix that the City considered "good enough" (but that I am still not especially happy with). Hopefully most of the issues will just shorten the life of the shower rather than cause catastrophic failure, but even that is frustrating for a brand new bathroom. And I should have checked that the new walls were square! This didn't even cross my mind since it seems like a very basic expectation, so we didn't discover this until it was too late to do much about it. It's not too noticeable aesthetically--none of the existing walls are square in our old house so my husband jokes that at least the new ones match--but it caused unnecessary drama when the tiler showed up. All of that initial work was done by the same worker, and the GC was not on site for most of it, so I think just wasn't supervising well enough. Luckily we have been happy with the work of the other subs, but I am mentally prepared for the possibility that we will have to go back and redo the shower in the not-too-distant future. At least if that happens, I'll know what to do differently...we'll see!

id hate to tear it out as well. assuming you used clips on the pan? that should have stopped it from lifting at perimiter. if the perimiter is not solidly supported and clipped and has flex when you shower over time that joint will fail again and again. especially problematic as the cement board can wick. the red studs is that a coating ? redgard? you have the cement board fully lapped over the tile flange ?