I think Mongo said it best about that I should just leave it to my own pages. This I think is the best advice to date. I have a bad habit of stirring the pot online of late and I am going to curb my drive and take it down several levels going forward. These men here coming down on me are doing so because it is the right thing to do - for you and you and you. I think the name calling should be stopped and feel this is not right. These men are protecting you from bad advice - I respect that. I of course did not mean to give it and realize now in hind sight that it was in fact foolish of me leave such a short and incomplete post. I can't take it back but I can improve going forward. I still think cross posting is wrong and few have offered their opinion on the subject as yet. I'll preach on my own pages and work on helping here when I can. I'm sorry to subject you all to my private goals and will spare you my preaching going forward. Thanks again for all the advice - I do appreciate it. Sorry for the disturbance in these friendly pages. I apologize mostly to Bill and to all who suffered through my posts... John Whipple

glnnj - Certainteed's stained fiber-cement products come in 6 shades: mahogany, cedar, redwood, maple, slate (which is the silver grey of deeply weathered wood) and emerald (which is a deep green). Go to the page I linked to in my post above and pick any of of the stain-finished products by clicking on its name (in blue). This will lead you to a new page with a small picture of that product on the right hand side. The small picture will have will have six tiny "color squares" beside it. Click on a square and the small picture will change to that color. Click on "view larger image" to see it in a larger size. Bear in mind that the colors you see on a computer are determined by the settings on your computer so the best you can get is a general idea of the colors. You'll want to see sample in real life to get a better idea of how the colors look. That said however, I found that Certainteed was extremely helpful. I could not find a distributor in my area and contacted Certainteed directly. I was wanting their pre-painted product and they sent me a sample board with sample of every color at no charge. Also, even tho there was no distributor in my local area, Certainteed indicated they could and would deliver any product I wanted to me. They don't restrict certain products/colors to certain areas of the country. Nichiha also comes in six standard stain colors and 2 special order stain colors. Standard colors are mahogany, maple, macadamia, charcoal gray, caramel, and emerald wheat. Special Order colors are redwood and weathered grey. Below is a link to the Nichiha site. There are two tiny triangle on the bottom left and right sides of the big picture on this page. Click on them to move thru a slide show of houses built using various nichiha siding - some painted and some stained. Hope this helps. Here is a link that might be useful: nichiha

The question begs to be asked...what's a mattock LOL I was pretty darned specific in the contract where it comes to tile. Actually the tile bidders were all pretty amazed at the detail, provided because of the FINE help received from ya'll here. This is a very expensive remodel, and one place I just won't cut corners is on the bones of the building, including the walls, joints, plumbing, wiring and any underlayment. It makes no sense to put wonderful tile on cheap material. In this case, I said cement board, (The shower looks like it is actually built out of cement...whatever board that was) but when the issue of using an easier form of "cement board" came up, I did say that Durock was ok but approved no additional changes, given that the "tile guy" said that the durock was just fine in his opinion. I have no idea who decided fiberock was a substitute for durock...but I'm sure I'll find out in the morning. Oh well, it can't be a real remodel if it's not "fun" at some points can it? Thanks again guys. I really couldn't do this (and my contractor probably wishes I didn't do this) without you LOL

Before hardy backer and other types of cement boards that started to hit the market sometime in the early 90's, the Green board was used for shower and bathtub enclosures, and today as well some of the wallboards like paperless, etc are still being used as tile backing material. In the last 4-5 years, I ripped out about 8 bathrooms in houses done in the 70's early 80's and I just did one bathroom recently, and there was not a single sign of moisture on the wallboard or beyond. I guess like anything else if everything is done the right way and everything is annually maintained there will be no issues. But when you see a tile with gaps in the corners from seasonal changes and missing grout here and there and there are constant moisture and water intrusion you will have failures and building material deteriorations.