My shower continues

RegLearning

Hey guys,

Still working on my shower area. I ran into a little trouble. First someone tol me I should have finished all in one shot (no chance I could do that). The walls are so out of square and corners are ridiculous. Anyway I have eveything done except for my niche. I tiled all the sides and am going to do the back in a bigger tile that we are using on the floor. I sloped the shelves so water will run off the shelf plus there is kerdi and I put some clear silicone behind the kerdi in the hardibacker joints. The pieces you see are set so they will match the height? I guess of the wall tiles creating a joint. I thought about using trim around these pieces but then thought I would just grout or caulk between the front joint where the wall tile meets the shelf and inside box tiles.

So my questions are this. What should I use inside the joints in the box to fill when I get there. My thought was silicone caulk but I will use grout if that is acceptable.

And

If I cut tiles around to match around the inside niche tiles how can I cleanup the exposed edge to make it not so noticible or is there another technique I should use.

Here's some pics and this was my last posting so you can see my progress.

Tub Surround tiling

Thanks.

Reg

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cleveman

Are you planning on keeping your car keys in that niche while you shower?

I couldn't follow your post very well.

You have to caulk every change in plane.

In order to make the outside corners look good, always use a bullnose or at least a factory edge (through and through porcelain). Otherwise, with through and through porcelain, if you have to deal with cuts, use a wet saw, then sand down the cuts with a belt sander and be prepared to buy some belts.

Blondesense

When I did my shower I used 12" tiles in a 3' x 4' shower. I have a window in there too, so I knew before hand I would have tons of cuts so I chose a porcelain tile with the clay the same color as the surface so cuts would be less noticeable. At this point, your best bet is to be extremely careful with your cuts so there is no chipping.

Then I used a smoothing stone like this to clean up the cut edges:

http://www.lowes.com/pd_17721-1255-2...ductId=1051003

Finally, if at all possible, position the cuts away from view. IOW, any cuts that will be above eye level, put the cut edge up. Any cuts below eye level, put the cut edge down. In the niche, put the cut edges along the back rather than front.

Like cleveman said, caulk any change of plane. Some people use silicone caulk. Personally I would choose a caulk that matches the grout.

Edited to add: If you are not happy with the cut tiles, you might play around with using those mosaic accent tiles around the niche too.