It still kills me that copper is considered the cadillac for pans in MA. I grew up in, and have worked in MA, so I'm plenty familiar with their methods. Some are so restrictive, some so lax, some so contradictory in nature. It still comes down to the pan being flat, and any imperfections in the flatness can lead to birdbaths (ponding), especially in the folded corners of the pan. While others will likely disagree, it's a failed installation in my world. The irony is that the installation is legal, and while the worksmanship, materials, and methods can be impeccable, a mud bed that retains moisture can be problematic over time. Some installations do need time to settle in. But if Bill recommended the guy, I figure your installer will give you a better analysis of what is occurring since he can put his eyes on the job, and he knows exactly how the floor and walls are detailed. I'm in Thailand now and your photos aren't loading. Probably not an issue with your photos, but with my internet connection.

I've tiled my own two bathrooms and my kitchen backsplash, so when my adult daughter's shower sprung a leak at her "new" (circa 1950) home, DH & I came to the rescue. Ripped out the whole tub surround (it gave up without a fight), fixed the plumbing, reinsulated, added backerboard, taped, mudded and commenced to tiling. Got complicated around the tub; being an old steel tub, it has about a 1" flange around the top edges as though it's supposed to bolt to something? We ran the backerboard down to within 1/4th" of that flange, did the tape /mud/dry time thing and then commenced to tiling. When I got to the grout, I must say, the grout was a tad drier than I'd liked for it to be, but I worked quickly and thought I'd done okay. We spaced the bottom row of tile to cover that backerboard/flange gap, which it did okay. Then I left my daughters to finish grouting the normal 1/4th gap around the edge of the tub. I would have used caulk, but since the gap varied some, the girls used the regular grout to finish off that bottom edge and the corners. Are you with me so far? It looked really nice. Now I notice a lot of little tiny cracks in the grout all over and I'm thinking I'll be okay to just smash in another coat of it. (She hasn't used any tile sealer, yet.) EXCEPT.........she called tonite to say the whole bottom row of that grout is soaking wet, coming out in big soggy clumps and some of the tile with it. My thoughts are that she didn't let the tile cure enough before going in and using it, so now we need to pull out all the soggy stuff and redo it from there. So, the questions are: did we handle the backerboard/tile/grout around that flange right? Or is there just enough movement in a steel tub to disallow a grout (vs caulk) to flex. If that makes any sense.......And the second question is: am I on the right track to fix it? How long does it REALLY take for tile to cure enough to take a shower? Please tell me I don't have to take down this whole job.....this is a single mother with a TEENAGE daughter who will just DIE if she doesn't get to shower. Thanks for reading this far............. mm

I don't know enough about your shower to provide positive guidance. Dark grout is usually a sign of water absorption and/or intrusion. It can sometimes show a dark grout around the perimeter of a floor, sometimes with moisture wicking up and darkening the grout in the lower walls. But that usually occurs after more than just a few showers. It can show as a dark ring around the drain. Sporadic dark spots on the floor could be due to slow draining "bird baths", or slight irregularities in what should be a nice continuous floor slope from wall to drain. Built-ins like benches can be hot spots if they were improperly detailed during construction. It's tough to say what your problem is. The typical first question is: Did they install the waterproof membrane in the shower floor on a sloped surface or was it installed directly on the flat subfloor? An overall photo of the shower might help.

Is the Platinum the Laticrete Platinum? If so what about Silver Shadow? It is a very soft gray that is almost white, but looks great with Platinum. Are you using cementitious grout or epoxy? I know many have used SS for their light or white tiles. Here is Silver Shadow epoxy on the bottom vertical grout spaces. The top area was grouted with a 50/50 ratio of Platinum and SS. The middle row was with Raven and SS. Note that there is a halo around the marble, like it is still wet. Epoxy can do that with marble, I just looked at my tile boards after over a month of drying and the halo is still slightly there with the darker grouts. But not as marked as in this picture. So that is something to consider. Here is the Silver Shadow epoxy with my bright white tiles. With these tiles the SS looks light gray, but with the tiles above it looks almost too white for my taste: I took Laticrete epoxy Platinum and mixed it with a little bit of Silver Shadow for an in between gray for my black slate floors. It is in a 3:1 ratio. The colors mixed very nicely. The grout sample on the left is the SS and the one on the right is the Platinum. It didn't take much SS to lighten it up significantly. If I did this over I would just have used Platinum. My DH really likes the combo. He thinks it ties in with the tub. It is relative isn't it, because it is not white at all but appears white. I will be having a marble listello, as seen above in the sample board, with my white tile wainscot. I might mask the marble off when I grout the white field tile with Silver Shadow. Then I would plan to come back and grout the marble with a reverse blend of Silver Shadow 3parts to Platinum 1 part. Nothing like trying to complicate things. That's one of the benefits with DIY. But if I was paying someone to grout, I would not consider these mixes.