Questions & Answers

Me again! Contractor has now agreed to demo both of my showers and reinstall them completely due to the complete failure to waterproof them correctly the first time. I'm so thankful that we've finally reached this agreement, even though it has taken us 3.5 weeks to get here. They were demo'd yesterday down to the studs with the exception of the niches in both showers and the mosaic feature wall in one of the showers. He wanted to save the mosaic wall as in his words: its a flat surface and the issues were in the corners. I disagree with this considering the feature wall has 2 horizontal seams spanning its width where a piece of durarock was pieced in across the middle. I know he's looking at money as that mosaic tile was expensive. Either way, I'm just happy we've finally gotten this far. Last night, after the crew left, I went in to check the progress and found the backside of the durarock on each side of the feature wall (so basically where tile had been removed from around the mosaic) covered heavily with thinset and the front side had been covered heavily with Mapelastic HPG. At the time, the thinset had not cured yet so you could easily see where it was covering and the amount of damage it was attempting to fix. I measured the thickness of the thinset and it was easily 3/8" deep in places, other places it was 1/4".

My questions for today before I bring up another concern with my GC

• Is this an appropriate fix before rehanging large format tiles on these walls?

• If it's not appropriate and sound, what literature can I take to him so I'm not taking my "opinion of industry standards" to him and I'm able to take him something concrete? Is cement board repair discussed in the handbook?

• If I go by installation instructions, do I reference the thinset instructions, the durarock instructions or the mapelastic installation instructions?

Photos and video of movement in the walls attached for reference. I appreciate your insight more than you know!