shower renovations in an old house

[MGH]

We are remodeling the bath room and like most projects in an old house the project gets bigger as you go. Here is the situation; the front wall of the tub/shower surround is not plumb. It falls away just shy of ½ inch from the top of the tub to the ceiling. I know I should shim out the cement backer board to make the wall nice and plumb. However to do that would mean we need to take out the sheet rock on the entire wall or have some odd joint where the tile stops. Plumbing the wall will no doubt run into additional unexpected complications, such as the doorway in the corner of the room. So, my question is this. How awful will it look if we gradually increase the width of the first column of tiles going up the back wall? Or, should we just go get a three piece tub surround?

[bbcamp]

You can hide the problem easier if you are using large tiles, say 6x6 or larger. Your layout should leave tiles that are larger than 1/2 size in the corners.

Another approach may be to shim the backerboard only in the area to be tiled, then use a v-cap or some other trim to create a ledge all the way around the shower. The ledge on the out-of-plumb wall will be slightly deeper than the others. This turns your problem into a "feature."