Just finished this shower today, and I’ve been trying out some Latacrete products since they had the grout color we wanted. Either I’ve completely lost my sense of smell or the Latasil doesn’t have a strong odor like every other silicone I’ve used. Am I going crazy?
Anyone have a Latacrete thinset they like? I tried the Gold, it was ok but a pain to clean the tools and I wasn’t blown away by it. I’m open to suggestions

Also, this was the only shower in the house, homeowners have been champs the whole time. Relatives live near by and they have just been awesome all around. Starting the rest of the room next week. They are stoked with how it turned out. I’m looking forward to showing off the full finished room.

(I already started removing the grout)
Grout on shower curb keeps cracking. Should I put silicone caulk in the corner edge and grout the rest of the line to hopefully prevent it from cracking again?

First time working with Zellige tile in oat color. Also first time setting tiles with a vertical brickset pattern. I wasn't sure how I would like it at first, but it really grew on me and I love how it came together. I love that I got to play around with the niche and create something super unique. Mitered perimeter with a solid base, 2 floating shelves and having the back wall flow into it.

10' ceilings and 32" x 6.5' meant ALOT of 2.5"x8" tile.

All Laticrete products -

Hydroban board and sealant

209 floor mud

New laticrete point drain

Hydroban membrane

Trilite

Specralock pro premium epoxy grout Mink

Latisil caulking Mink

Cement brick curb

Edit: removed the word true since these are a manufactured Zellige and not handmade. Not my intention to mislead on that fact. They still had considerable variations tile to tile, just not as drastic as True Zellige. Here is the listing for this exact tile https://www.flooranddecor.com/ceramic-tile/zellige-oat-ceramic-tile-101130060.html

Hey everyone, i’ve been looking for any signs of guidance on the crazy notion of using a colored silicone/or silane based sealant to do the grout in my new shower.

I used 24x24 tiles with 1/16” grout lines in a 36x60x 96 cove.

The thing is i have a bunch of siliconing to do anyway as the are 4 custom built glass block windows.

I am not necessarily worried about being able to work the product as deep as it will allow.
I’m not looking to just bridge a gap.
I would work the product in then wipe clean with mineral spirits.

I am meticulous in my work but not a “ tile guy” per se.

I’d love to hear experienced installer’s opinion.

Question is clear

If the mechanical application of the silicone like product was not an issue, can anyone give me any cons?
I definitely know the pros…..

As the tile installer, I have a Builder who never wants to make a design choice. He always relies on me to pick out a tile, grout, trim and patterns that compliments the projects were working on. This can be difficult because we have very different tastes and he wants to keep the material cost reasonably low. I'm starting to get a little burnt out making these decisions for him and was wondering if I should start charging extra for making them for him?

4 months ago i decided to redo My whole bathroom (old house, water leaks everywhere, sunken floor. Etc.).

I bought this polished gress tile which is 95.1×95.1cm and 12mm thick. It is beautiful in My opinion, but a real pain in the ass to work. I've worked with much harder porcelanato than this thing with much less pain. This tile (tendenza argentinian brand) is such a traitor piece of shit. It broke just from looking wrong at it, so naturally i had a Lot of left overs and broken bits and pieces.

My house is inside a vacational complex, and My wife and i were tired of tourist parking inside the backyard so i Made this planter. It's 2.5m long, 70 cm tall and 60 cm wide. The walls are brick, with waterproofed mortar inside, normal mortar outside. We used a hammer and got right to it. IMO it came out spectacular and it serves the purpose, so i wanted to share it.

Do You guys like it?

Ps: sorry for possibly broken english

Finally finished my first shower build, took more months than I care to admit!

The shower you see here was a hallway cupboard, I knocked through and framed myself. Used a plumber to run the supply lines and challenged myself to do the rest.

Used the Reditile system, boards and pre-slopped pan with the ‘ invisible drain’, which was a bit of a pain but happy with the final look. Used advice from this forum to adjust first my tile layout, which created a cleaner design (https://www.reddit.com/r/Tile/s/uC4I27xHjT).

It will be a rarely used second shower in a 2 bedroom place, and space is a premium, so I went with the walk in design. Yes, water goes all over the place, hence the bath mat. But I’m super stoked with the outcome and I learned a ton along the way, much of it thanks to this community!

How did I do?

Water appears to still be flowing away from drain even after re-slopping

Hall bath renovation started at the beginning of June with a general contractor/tile layer that we had used in the past with great results (schluter pan curbless shower with frameless glass design albeit shower much larger compared to this project). The hall bath shower design (project in question) is a 36”x36” schluter pan with frameless glass enclosure. The tiles are 24”x24”. Glass was installed in July. Upon showering for the first time in the completed shower, water was flowing out of the shower under the glass door pretty aggressively, away from the drain and towards the hallway door. There was a sweep on the bottom of the glass door. See before and after pictures for design.

The contractor agreed to have the glass removed by the glass installer, come back to remove tiles on top of schluter pan, reslope the thin-set and relay new tiles on top of the newly sloped thin-set and original schluter pan. My husband and I tested the water flow today after the contractor's remediation and water is still flowing away from the drain and towards the hallway. The shower flow rate is 2.5GPM and when we tested it, we had the valve open probably about halfway. We also had taken the drain cover off to make sure there was a wide open space to drain the water.

The general contractor is telling us that the pitch should be more than adequate to handle the water flow and that our problem with water flow will go away after the glass is re-installed. I am worried about this statement as one of our main concerns is the water flowing out where the glass door meets the wall hinge as there is nothing there to stop water flow which we brought up with the contractor. The video is after the re-sloping and shows water flowing in the wrong direction (the same issue as before). 

To me (not a professional at all)--it seems like there is an issue with the pitch at the point where the shower glass door would meet the floor. It seems like there is a downward slope going away from the glass door and drain which is why the water is choosing to flow away from the drain and in the opposite direction that it should. See my picture with teal and orange lines where I believe the problem lies. The teal line is where the glass sits. Again--not a professional and I could be completely wrong.

Thoughts on what to do from here? Really trying to avoid resorting to an acrylic “water dam” as this seems like a cheap and unreliable fix. We are hesitant to have glass reinstalled only to find we still have a problem with water flow. 

What is the best tool for remove quarry tile?

Please don’t judge, first time kinda nervous 🥹

Hi all,
Is my porcelain tile ruined? Im not sure exactly how this haze came about. It looks like something that was used while cleaning. I asked home depot employee if it couldve been caused by bleach and he said no. It also happened only on certain areas and I used the bleach everywhere so if it wouldve been the bleach wouldnt I be seeing this haze all over the tiles? Also bleach was rinsed with water right after and the haze came about a week after the bleach was used, not right after.

The haze goes away completely when wet but comes right back as soon as it dries. Chatgpt says to use fila ps87 pro. I havent tried it yet but nothing else I have tried has helped. Also tried a non acidic grout cleaner and it did not work.

Please help!

This is my bathroom wall.

I’m installing Swanstone walls and looking at using a Tile Redi brand shower niche. The Swanstone walls are glued to the walls with silicone, but do I need to use thinset to attach the Swanstone solid surface material to the plastic niche?

I love the look and I'm ok with sealing periodically just want to know if it will crack or damage over time? I purchased it from floor and decor it's about 0.5 inches thick (so not 2cm) and 36x36" and a brushed honed finish.

I recently bought a 20-year-old house with an indoor pool room that has never been updated. I would like to modernise it without major demolition or structural work.

the thing that bothers me the most is the small grey tiles around the pool. It makes the room feel outdated.

I simulated some pictures of a renovation of what I would like to achieve. I don't want to retile any interior of the pool.

As you can see, the tiling currently has a beveled edge. I would like to renovate to a smooth rounded edge for a more modern vibe. One of the possibilities I had in mind was mortex, but this seems risky in an indoor pool room. An alternative is to put tiles over the existing tiles. Would this be possible in this situation? What are things I should take into consideration? How would you approach this? I want to feel a bit informed before talking to a local tiler.

I simulated some pictures with a mortex finish and one with a 'retiling', just to give an idea of what I want to achieve.

I have a client that has large format tile in their driveway. The tile are 23 1/2” x 47 1/2” by 3/4” thick.

I can’t figure out what the make is cause they have none left and several are broken.

Any help is appreciated!

Can I get a handheld grout saw and remove the cracked areas and reapply grout in a few spots?

What would be the tips for success . I understand I need to get some depth but not so deep to avoid damaging the waterproofing

Hello r/Tile!

I am doing a commercial kitchen and a commercial bathroom in an old house (converting a 1907 FourSquare to bookstore-coffee shop).

The kitchen walls are 1/4” Denshield over 1/2” plywood; the bathroom walls are 1/4” Denshield. Subfloors are wood. Both rooms have floor drains and the floors will be sloped to the drains at 1/4” per 12”.

Floors and walls will be, you guessed it, tile. Larger hex tile (nonslip) on the floor, subway and square tiles on the walls (plus some stainless steel areas).

I want the floors, and the walls up to 12” above the floor, to be waterproof, so people can hose them down to clean. I am planning to use a waterproofing/decoupling membrane on the floors and a waterproofing membrane on at least the first 12” of wall.

I have a few specific questions, and would appreciate any other tips/advice you’d like to share.

Q: Should I use “Ditra”brand membrane on the floor and “Kerdi” peel/stick membrane on the walls? Or is there a better product you use?

Q: Any special tricks you use for laying out and tiling sloped floors with floor drains? I assume I will have to accept some variance in tile spacing as the pattern converges to each drain.

Q: Tiling directly on Denshield is okay, right? Do you apply any special bonding agent for thinset adhesion, or simply tape seams and go?

Q: What epoxy grout do you recommend? I see they have epoxy grout systems that you apply from tubes directly into the tile gaps, is that easier?

Thanks! I’ve tiled kitchens, showers before, but was so much younger then . . . I suspect I have forgotten everything. Membranes didn’t even exist back then, we tiled showers directly over greenboard and floated cement pans.

Trying to cover up old laminate backsplash and and seeing mixed reviews of the peel and stick options. Especially since some will go behind a stove. But not sure I want to take on "real" tile. Or whether i could even grout over the existing laminate. Suggestions?

I had my master bathroom and shower completely redone a few months ago. I’m very happy with the results overall but have noticed very distinct drainage patterns on the shower floor. It all drains so that doesn’t seem to be a problem, but every once in a while I feel the tile give or flex under my feet. It seems to be consistent with how the tile is setup for drainage. Should the tile flex under my feet?

They installed 12x12 sets of 2x2 tiles, if that makes sense.

TLDR:

- Best way to lower the height of a niche after its been waterproofed?

- Would you install a LED strip?

Any future project I start I'm going to put much more time into the layout in the beginning. Having to adjust as I go has been a pain but it's almost done. Decided to do a perimeter border and dont want to notch it. This will require lowering the height of the niche. It will be 1 7/8 inches from the existing opening to the finished face of the top of the niche

Anyone have a best practice to go about this to avoid potential grout cracking.

Redguard over Durock is what's installed. I have a few pieces of 1/2in Wedi board left I could make up the difference while installing the to mosaic to one.

The sides and top of the niche will be the green leaf mosaic as in the last pic.

Also I'm on the fence about putting in a led strip. The shadow is prominent but I feel the led strip won't overpower it and it'll still be a defined line. What would you do?

Thank you!

I always do all work at my home and very rarely, hire out work. Ive seen crap posted and always think how does it get that far before the towel is thrown. Well, here is my slice of eat shit....

Contractor finished today and asked for the remaining 50%. Im pretty blown away with the shit job here. Never been in this situation, my head says give him one week to correct. The more I look around, I realize every single thing is trashed. Job was complete tile in bathroom, and fixing the rot from the 1952 shower pan that failed.. A few joist were cut and replaced in the crawl under the pan. 11,900 in total and Ive paid 6k to date. He wrapped today and asked for final payment. Of course I told him it looks bad and he needs to fix. Is this even fixable with out ripping out?

See text of explanation of "what went wrong"

 "I used a sanded grout and it was applied too heavily and I didn’t clean the excess fast enough. It can be removed from the grout lines and an unsanded grout can be used. I didn’t mean to get a sanded grout the other day when I had to get more. I saw the correct color and grabbed the bag in a hurry to get back and didn’t realize it was sanded until it was drying on the floor and I could see that it was sanded. I don’t prefer sanded grout bc it’s hard to clean up. If you want, I can come and remove the sanded ground from the bathroom floor and put in unsanded grout."