We have an old house here in Scotland, possibly built around 1850. In the bathroom the floors are concrete and we have taken out the bath to leave only the sink unit and toilet. That leaves a square room with concrete walls and a concrete floor, and a wide open space covering approx 7 feet by four feet at the left hand end of the bathroom. I want to build up a concrete shower tray with a drain linking into the drain for the sink unit and toilet. Then tile the tray with floor tiles and walls with wall tiles. What is the best plan of attack here? I've been told a Granite/Cement mix will be best for the tray, but what is the ratio of Granite to Cement to Water? Can I submerge the drain (with the top flush with the tiles of course) if it is made from plastic? How do I go about the shuttering process? Are there any other considerations to take into account here? Any help would be very much appreciated. Many Thanks Alex

Hi, My first tile job... my hallway with 16"x16"x5/16" porcelain tiles. Since it's a hall, there's 5 adjacent hardwood floor rooms. Questions: The manufacturer is in Spain and doesn't respond to my questions on correct trowel, notches, etc. - any thoughts? We don't want bulky oak threshold transitions between the oak floors and the tile hall. We hope to use the Schluter expansion joints. We're trying to figure the installed tile height to see if it will be close to the oak floor height. The tile is 5/16" and we're going to use 1/8" thick Schluter Ditra on the subfloor. Is there a way to predict the installed height w/thinset? Also, some posts seem to suggest that 3/4" T&G is "thin" for supporting tiles. We have 2x10 16" OC 10 ft. long doug fir joists that will have a brand new single layer 3/4" T&G on them covered by Schluter Ditra. Is that solid enough? Thanks guys!