A Tiled Shower with a Polyurethane Pan?

When you are considering remodeling your bathroom, usually the first thing to go is that nasty shower, bathtub, or shower/bath combination.

Many homeowners don't know whether to install a pre-fab shower stall or a tile shower. For homeowners who want a combination of the two, it is possible to tile the walls, yet put a fiberglass pan down. That way, you have the beauty of the tiled walls but the strength and flex of the fiberglass pan.

The only problem with the second method is you are stuck with a fiberglass shower pan that doesn't look so great.

But even one step better is to lay down a poly shower pan and then to tile over that poly pan. Yes, it can be done, and in many cases it is better than the traditional tilers' method of forming a floor from scratch.

One company, Tile-Redi, claims that you can lay down their one-piece poly shower stall pan and adhere it with PVC glue, just like you would any other stall pan. Yet when all is said and done, you can lay down tile on the poly pan with Latapoxy epoxy glue. Normally, you can't do this on any old fiberglass pan because they flex too much and will eventually crack the tile grout and even the tile itself. Tile-Redi's product is heavier and sturdier than a normal pan, so that it can withstand the weight of most people.