jaymielo- I don't know if I did things 'backwards' by most standards, but it worked for me! I picked out my tile before anything else in the bathrooms. I did a lot of magazine clipping for inspiration. I found my cache of clippings the other day and was surprised to see how closely I ended up following their general themes after all. Although I didn't have specific colors picked out for each bathroom, I did have a general FEEL of what I wanted. For instance, in my boys bath, I knew the design needed to be more masculine, what an adult would feel comfortable with (since they won't be little for long!), and also something that would work if a girl ever entered the family picture and used one of the bedrooms sharing that bath. Honestly, I didn't even think about the countertop at this point, since I knew that it would be easier to pick that out after figuring out the tile. We ended up doing the copper slate bath up there: For our master bath, I had found a pic of one that had a creamy yellow with darker wood in it. Then we went on a trip to Santa Fe and stayed in a B&B that had the most awesome travertine shower in it. DH and I knew immediately that we wanted to find a similar tile for our master bath. We also had known for a few years that we wanted to do a pebble floor in there. Adding all those ideas together, we came up with this: I guess my best suggestions would be to 1)Get your magazine/photo clips out and decide what it is you like about them in particular. 2)Decide of the main function of a particular bath--kids, light or heavy traffic, guests, etc. 3)If you want individuality, do each bath one at a time so that you don't overwhelm yourself. Keep in mind that even though they will all be different, if they fit the general color schemes of your house, there will still be a 'flow' throughout. 4)If you want even more cohesiveness, pick a general tile and mix the accent pieces/countertops to individualize each bath. 5) Remember that you can always change the paint color, but it's MUCH harder and more costly to change tile! I'm sure whatever you do will turn out great. It's just the process that can sometimes be overwhelming!

It sounds like condensation in the wall cavity. When you replaced the drywall 11 years ago, was there a vapour barrier behind the drywall ? Is cold air infiltrating the wall cavity from somewhere, perhaps a neighbouring garage thats poorly insulated ? The window itself may not be the culprit, although better ventilation in a bathroom is always helpful. The fact that mould has grown right through the drywall implies the drywall is constantly damp, even when it not raining. Rip out all the drywall around the window. Check for openings and gaps where air may be getting in. Spray foam the entire wall that contains the window. Who knows whats in that mould, it might be toxic Here is a link that might be useful: All-about-screen-doors

Tim H: I do sound a bit cynical, don't I? I can see both sides here. If the builder promised a seamless installation and screwed it up, he's on the hook. He had a chance to fix it very inconspicuously and blew it. I fix the mistakes on my jobs immediately. I mean stop-what-you're-doing-and-fix-it now immediately. I broke a front sink rail on an estone job several years ago and got it fixed before anyone but me ever knew. The point is, you never give a customer leverage to withhold payment if you don't have to. This builder hasn't learned that lesson yet.

I'm sorry this is happening to you. This happened to me a couple years ago. So I recommend you do the following: Tell the contractor (whoever hired the tile people) to stop work and schedule sit-down meeting. Make the meeting be something like Friday so that you have some time to prepare. Do this communication by email. (Do every single syllable of communication by email from now on. Nothing verbal. If any verbal words are exchanged, confirm them by a follow-up email confirming your understanding of what at was said/planned/promised/agreed, and ask for confirmation in the email.) Get ready for your meeting: Document your understanding of everything that was done wrong. Put all the blue tape all over in the bathroom. You can download an online version of the TCNA handbook here: https://www.tcnatile.com/products-and-services/publications/218-english-publications/188-handbook.html It's a manual of industry standards for tile. It's less than $40. It also includes information about waterproofing. It's long, but you don't have to read the whole thing. Read the introduction (about 50 pages) and the stand-alone shower sections. You can skip all the other parts such as swimming pools, etc. Read about waterproofing and tiling on this forum and on the John Bridge forum. You need support for the meeting. Ask someone (a spouse, adult child, friend, neighbor) to attend the meeting with you as your support person and as a note-taker. Create your list of questions/concerns. Make them open ended and a bit broad, such as "How did you waterproof my shower?" "Do you have your TCNA manual with you; can you show me in there what method you used?" (probably he doesn't know what this is) "Why does the tile look so messy?" "What is your plan to fix all the problems?" Let the contractor talk and make sure your note-taker writes everything down. Don't interrupt of start arguing with the contractor. Always stay business like and calm. If the contractor gets upset that's his problem. Have the meeting. If they don't show up, send an email inquiring why. Go through your whole list of questions/concerns. If the contractor gets off track, always come back to the important question: "What is your plan to fix all the problems?" If the contractor gets upset, says things like "You're too picky", "We've never had a complaint before", or "You're too hard to please" ask them to stay on track regarding the sub-par work. If the contractor yells at you, stands up or starts pacing around (happened to me), ask them to stop yelling at you in your home and tell them to take a minute and let you know when they are ready to proceed calmly. If, through your research and the contractor's answers, you are reasonably convinced that the waterproofing was done wrong, and/or the tile mess can't be fixed without compromising the waterproofing, ask the contractor to re-demo and start all over with a new, qualified, certified and experienced tile professional in charge. Your contractor doesn't change; you don't pay more; this is on the contractor's dime. If they say anything about you paying more, or making a payment now, say that you don't feel that that is reasonable given the problems so far, but that you look forward to the new, competent crew, and if the work is truly professional you don't foresee any reason why full payment would not be reasonable at the end of the project. They will either agree to redo it or not; or they might want more time to think about their plan over the weekend, etc, etc. You might not get a definitive yes or no during the meeting. In our meeting (which was on a Friday), the contractor went off the rails several times saying we should hire someone else to re-do the shower and they would just finish the rest of the bathroom; that they didn't want to touch the shower anymore. DH kept bringing them back to "We hired you to complete the whole project and we trust that you will be able to figure out a plan to fix the waterproofing; so what do you think you will do?"...stuff like that happened 4 or 5 times. At the end of the meeting the only agreement was that they were going to work on their plan over the weekend and would contact us on Monday. After the meeting we confirmed this understanding by email. After the meeting, send an email with a general summary of the meeting, based on the notes, and re-cap any agreements, quitting, or what you perceive as the result of the meeting. Keep all your language business-like and clear. They might have agreed to re-do with a new, competent crew. Great! In your email, express how please you are at their business like approach to these waterproofing and tile problems. Say something like "We look forward to seeing you and the new tile crew on Monday for the re-demoing and starting fresh on the project. Have a nice weekend." They might flat our refuse and get mad at you (refer to the yelling comments above). If they flat out refuse, say "Oh my; so you are quitting the project?" After the meeting, confirm this by email. They might have huffed off, in which case you also confirm that my email. Something like "We were disappointed that you left our meeting this morning without letting us know what the plan is to fix all the waterproofing and tile problems on our bathroom project. After you have some time to thing about the project, please let us know how you plan to proceed. If this means you are quitting the project, please let us know right away so that we can start the process of hiring a new contractor. Hope to hear form you on Monday..." After the meeting, whatever the conclusion was, post the contractors answers here and/or on John Bridge where I hope you will get continued support from the pros on the forums. In our case, the contractor wanted to think over the weekend and then they quit by email on Monday. We had to start over. Months later they later sued us saying that we fired them illegally. We had no choice but to respond. It went to District Court where we were awarded ALL our money back plus extra for materials that they ruined. Why did the judge award to us? Because ALL communication with the contractor was done by email, and the judge could clearly see that they quit; she threw out their suit and award us everything that we put in our counter suit. Another huge reason is because our new tile pro, who is an experienced, over-qualified, certified pro, testified as an expert witness about all the things done wrong by the quit-GC. And don't be scared - we did all the legal stuff ourselves. It's not as hard as everyone thinks. Again, I'm really sorry this is happening to you. We also live in a Wild Wild West area (North of Houston) and the township doesn't care what anyone does in their house. You could string extension cords all over the house for every single thing, put an outhouse inside your bathroom, install a firepole in place of your staircase, and no one would care til you sell the house and finally an inspector comes inside.