When I first arrived, this shower had a host of issues and it was only 5 years old (see this post).  It was a sad situation, but I was glad I could help resolve the problems by tearing out the leaky tile floor and replacing it with a new Kerdi waterproofing system.  In the end the shower looked great and you have a hard time noticing that part of the tile had been ripped out and redone.

Even though the original contractor who installed the shower was uncooperative to fix it for the homeowner, he did give us some clues as to which tile was originally used.  I ended up finding the tile at a local distributor.  It’s called Normandy Twilight from Esquire Tile.  It comes in various sizes as well as some bullnose edge pieces that have rounded corners. 

It’s somewhat unusual to be able to find a perfect match for the tile when you’re doing a project like this.  Even if it’s just 4″ white squares, it can be hard to find the exact match because it may be a different shade of white!  How frustrating!

We made one main change to the tile that is obvious, and that is the floor tile.  The old shower used the larger 6″ tiles on the floor.  I generally prefer to use smaller tiles on shower floors because they conform to the slope for a smoother floor.  Large tiles tend to rock back-and-forth on any sloped surface meaning that one corner is bound to be sticking up higher than those next to it.  This is called lippage.  Esquire offers a mosaic sheet of 2″ tiles using the Normandy Twilight mixed with some lighter shades of tile.  This was the perfect choice for our new floor.

You can see that most of the issues with the old shower lurked below the tile surface.  With a new waterproofing system and floor that is sloped to help the water actually drain away, this new shower should hold up for many decades to come.