Tiling a shower, how to transition from backer board (durock) to drywall

[Rich]

I am in the process of removing a crappy shower stall and I am planning to tile the shower area.

I plan to use concrete backer board in the area that will be tiled.

My question is how do I transition from the backer board to the drywall when tiling. I dont plan to tile to the ceiling or do a I plan to tiles the walls outside the shower area.

Do I... Do I tape and mud the seam where the backer board hits the tile with tile mastic and then tile slighly over the line with the tiles. In this example if the backer board goes 6 feet high I would tile up to say 6 foot 2 or so.

or do I tape and mud the seam with spackel Coating the top inch or so with spackel and then tiling up to the 5 foot 10 mark...

I dont know that spackel attaches to backer board so I think the first choice is right but just wanted to be sure. At first I quickly thought that you might not want to tile over the drywall backerboard seam but after thinking about it further I thought that the backbaord/drywall seam is not really much differnt then tiling over a backerboard/backerboard seam

Is that right?

[Colbyt]

I am no tile expert. When I did this I carried the backerboard completely past and above any wet areas, filled voids with durobond, above the wet areas I applied drywall tape and smoothed the finish with regular drywall mud. The actual joint at the top was about 2" below the top of the tile and on the sides about 4" past the edge of the tub ( this was where the studs were located. You are correct in the statement that 1/2" backer board and drywall seams are the same.

[Bill]

When I had my shower rebuilt the tile man ran green board the full height of the shower, then put the backer board over the green board. Then he used edge tile that lapped over the edge of the bakerboard. It worked quite well and looks good. I assumed that this is standard procedure, and is certainly less work than trying to patch the backer board into the wall.

Bill Gill

[MLD]