On Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:38:49 -0500, trader-of-some-jacks
wrote:

I'd already "done the plastic thing" by the time of the above post,
and so far, so good. Two showers taken this morning, and no water
from the ceiling.

The plastic is about waist-high in the shower, down to the caulk line
where the tile hits the pan. Yes, I goofed up; I should have had the
plastic lower to eliminate any exposure to the lowest grout on the
wall. But even so, like I said, no leaks.

The single-handle faucet, and the plate on which it's mounted, were
fully exposed to the flying water, and the droplets going down the
wall.

I'm going to repeat this experiment the next few days, and hopefully
get the same "no leaks" results. Not looking forward to grouting, but
beats every other option, hands down.

Since I often browse newsgroups looking for answers, I wanted to close
this one out by sharing how this eventually unfolded.

The garbage bag taped across the shower side of the stall seemed to be
doing the trick - except on the fourth day, just as I was about to
repair the grout, there was a leak into our kitchen.

Back to the drawing board.

So it's now three weeks later and here's what happened.

It appeared that, if we kept the shower curtain liner from pressing on
the wall, no water would leak into our kitchen. But if we sealed it
to the wall (not that unusual - the liner has suction cups on it to
promote sticking to the wall, and obviously, that would ensure no
drips on the bathroom floor), we'd get a leak.

After a few weeks of making these observations, I came to the
conclusion that the curtain on the wall would channel water running
down the walls into the grout lines, where it would pour down, until
hitting a crack or hole. Then, because of the liner pressing on the
crack, the water would "take the path of less resistence" and pour
into the crack.

The few times my wife or I accidentally pressed the liner to the wall,
we'd get a leak. But never otherwise.

So I was finally satisfied enough to rip off the plastic and fix the
lower three feet of horizontal and vertical grout (with, naturally, no
visible issues higher up, and lots of visible issues closer to the
bottom of the wall). And today, first time back in the shower in a
few days, and two showers, no leaks. And we had the liner touching
the wall.

Hooray.