We are redoing our bathroom shower and we have removed the tiles on the wall and floors. The floor seems to be sand and it is damp. We expected to see cement. What is our next step? Do we need to buy a pan or is there another way to do it?

It happened to me me once. I removed the pan and it had soil and sand underneath.This happened in Lehigh Acres,FL in a house from the 50's. So,I bought Quickrete and rebar and built the floor first and then I used a pan liner,etc. It was an even more challenging the plumbing

WOW I've never heard of that. "Floor mud" Interesting, I'll have to research that. I've learned something too.

What you have there now is called floor mud and it should be taken out and redone, you don't need shower pan if your shower is lower than the concrete slab.