After hanging all of the cement board we used mesh tape and thin-set mortar to seal all of the seams. Then finally, we painted the surface (twice) with Red Guard waterproofing. You can also see that we set a piece of 1/4 inch Hardiboard down the center of the back wall before waterproofing. The glass tile we selected for that area is much thinner than the field tile. This bump out would help even out the tile depth.
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I looked at a number of tiles, especially accent tiles. I knew that I wanted to keep most of the shower white but my husband always likes to have some interesting accent tile. I like to get my tile from Floor & Decor because they have such good prices but I did look several other places including Home Depot and Lowes. Here are some of the options we considered but did not pick:
The curves in this tile seemed daunting to deal with for the edges.
Instead we picked a striped mosaic glass tile. Or I should say, we picked three of them. As we have done several times, we decided to combine several mosaics to make our own combination. It always seems so easy at the time....
Here they are being merged to create one long stripe.
And here is the stripe in place on the wall, surrounded by the white tile. Either side of the stripe is less than the width of the large white tile. Technically I could have just stacked full sized pieces on top of each other but I thought it would look better in a stair-step pattern instead.
The niche itself was a little tricky. Since this design was fairly modern I wanted to make the area surrounding the niche as simple and clean as possible. That meant that the tile had to be cut very precisely. Here is a shot after I completed tiling the niche area. Those top tiles didn't have anything under them for support so I used a cut piece of tile to hold it in place until it dried. Also, I waited for those tiles to dry before tiling the two rows above. You can also see in this shot that I grouted the left side of the shower. I chose a white grout which I usually don't like for a shower - mildew shows too much. However, I didn't feel like there was much choice here. So to combat the mildew problem, I used a urethane grout which dries very hard and solid. I am hoping it is very unhospitable to mold and mildew.
A couple of issues arose in tiling this shower. These large tiles call for some special treatment. As I mentioned in the flooring post, I offset the tiles in 1/3 increments instead of 1/2 in order to combat the problem of "cupping." Even with that strategy I did have a problem with the middles of the tile sticking out further than the ends. The problem seemed worse when I backbuttered the tiles - not sure why. I didn't backbutter this wall and the problem almost disappeared.
Another requirement of the large tile is that you use a specially formulated thin set that is very strong. It was actually pretty easy to work with and didn't set up too quickly. The problem arose with the spacers - it would not let go of the spacers! When I went to pull the spacers after the mortar had set, they were very difficult to remove. Several snapped apart leaving pieces between the tile. After about 1 1/2 hours I was able to pry all of the pieces off one wall. Very frustrating for a job that should take 5 minutes!
That's all for now. More tile to come in the bunkroom bathroom.
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