where to read the blog in chronological order from post to post, grab your coffee

don’t forget about the shampoo and other master bathroom renovation progress reports

September 2, 2014

Happy Day after Labor Day!!

This post comes to you with all kinds of awkwardly unattractive, in-between process shots (with product affiliate links to boot) of the master bathroom renovation in an effort to spread the good word about shampoo storage in a tiled shower. That’s right, it’s a bit of a sea of cement board around here accented by the impossible-to-miss red tint of the last layer of waterproofing membrane in the shower.

After we wrapped up the diy shower pan it was time to get all of the other surfaces of the shower ready for some tile. I feel like I say this at every point, but there are so many different ways to do these things and you can spend weeks reading up on different techniques and tips and warnings. I’m giving our own process a try, which is a mix of all different things I’ve read (an amalgamation, if you will) and sharing what we’ve learned along the way.

Like adding cement board around a shower bench.

Everyone says to do it and yet these same people are telling you not, under any circumstances, to screw into your pvc shower liner. Yes, the same liner that is covering our shower bench that is now getting covered by cement board. How exactly is my cement board supposed to stay attached? Magic?

I didn’t go overboard but I also didn’t stress too much about screwing into the cement board and pvc liner on our bench to make sure it was all attached securely, making sure to use the proper cement board screws of course. Another waterproofing step coming up eased any worries I had. More on that in a minute.

There’s also a technique to use a cage kit of sorts to create your tiled shower curb. I really couldn’t be bothered, I went cement board ~~with more screws~~ for this, too.

Which ties in nicely to the mesh tape and thinset requirement for every cement board seam. Including the 1/4″ backer board underlayment I set over the entire floor.

This process gives you plenty of time to contemplate the meaning of life. This is just one of those jobs that takes longer than you think. Plan accordingly, you don’t want to be smack dab in them middle of the wet bucket of thinset and dirty tools only to realize you have somewhere to be rightthissecond. The clean-up process alone takes time. And:

wear gloves, remove your rings and try not to thinset your wedding rings together 😉
use an old pair of scissors instead of ruining a good pair to cut the mesh tape, you will get thinset on the handles
mix the thinset in small batches (I have wasted so much thinset just because of mixing too much at a time, it’s hard to gauge since you have to add the water first, start in small batches.)
have good music playing in the background
and if the stars align your husband will get home from work and see you still working so he will feel so inclined to do the dishes, make dinner and have a glass of wine ready for you by the time you finish washing your hands
REALLY IMPORTANT: wash your tools thoroughly after each use, the thinset will stick to them for life if you don’t, and you don’t want that … even if you see the glass of wine ready on the counter as you head out to the sink with thinset covered fingers

Now, our renovation is a little different in the fact that the back side of many of our walls are open, freeing us up to do things a little backwards around here.

For instance, if you don’t have access to the inside of your wall from the other side you will want to install your shower valve and head before installing the cement board on your shower walls.

Or maybe we’re going for a dry shower. You know, like those decorative dry rivers made of rock that people put in their back yards. Just the idea of it makes me feel so … what’s the word … oh yeah, dirty.

Yeah. No. 🙂

Because our shower is pretty much 4 feet square we just bought two full 4′ x 8′ sheets of 1/2″ cement board and hung them up vertically with a few cut outs around the bench.

Which, in a moment of rare serendipity when it comes to DIY home improvements, turned out to be the exact size piece I needed for another little shower feature you do not want to forget about.

I was feeling particularly giddy about things after the day we installed the shower head and valve, which meant we had the plumbing lines hooked up, including the drains, and the shower had her final coat of waterproofing (again, more on this in a sec).

And then I was literally awoken by the thought that same night … where are we going to put the stinking shampoo? I had forgotten to include an area in the wall to serve as a shelf for our plethora of beauty products (read: shampoo and conditioner).

But, since we have the back of that wall open, creating that little niche was just a matter of measuring (by using our shampoo bottle) and marking a general idea of where it should go. The main considerations here for location of the niche were those electrical lines and finding one wall stud to use in the framing.

The framing in and leveling it all from the back side was easy since the wall was open.

I drilled a little hole right beside the wall stud to line the approximate desired location of the niche up with the existing stud for easier framing.

With the frame in place I just cut out the cement board with a sawsall and a utility knife, cement board cuts in the same manner that drywall does if you score the mesh along a straight line and then tap it the piece will break along the line and you can then cut it along the break line from the back.

And that piece of cement board I had cut out so it would fit around the bench … it was the perfect fit for the back of the new shampoo niche. Which I found inexplicably exciting. I think it’s just the deliriousness of the madness of the current state of our living environment. Why yes, I am working on the master bathroom from the lovely confines of behind our fridge in our kitchen … which means so much dust in the kitchen I just pretend not to notice. Even the dogs know not to lick food that drops on the floor in the kitchen up, they will most likely get a clump of cement board instead. Any little victory just feels like it needs to be celebrated.

More scraps of 1/4″ cement board to cover the inside of the shampoo niche, and more mesh tape and thinset on all the edges, and we’re finally talking about the last waterproofing step.

Redgard, it’s not exactly cheap (and I needed 2 gallons), but I liked the piece of mind it gave me to just slather on a few coats of it and essentially create a rubbery barrier between what we’ve taken this long to create and the tile that will be installed.

It goes on super easy with a flat trowel or 3/4″ nap roller.

And you know its dry when it turns red. I applied 2-3 generous coats and used a brush from the dollar store to make sure to cover all of the corners.

A few Redgard tips:

use in a well ventilated area, this is no joke, this stuff will make you high
Redgard is for use on porous surfaces, I had first put a coat of clear silicone adhesive over all of my screws and I could tell those areas took much longer to dry, probably because the silicone had turned the porous surface into a non-porous surface
apply liberally, but don’t leave any goops, it will dry exactly how you leave it, lumps and bumps and all
apply two coats in different directions, apparently this makes the “membrane” it creates stronger, the first coat I applied vertically and the second coat I applied horizontally ~~mostly~~
if you’ve created your shower pan like we did you don’t need to cover it entirely with Redgard, just be sure to coat the edge where the floor meets the wall well and spread it evenly, the shower pan is designed for proper drainage if any water finds a way under your tile

And with that we are ever so close to tiling. Or I may have gotten started already!!

We’ve been waiting for our sinks to arrive (and they just did!) so we can do some math on the height of our vanity to determine exactly where to have the drains and water lines come out of the wall, then we’ll finish those up and get the last piece of drywall (we’ll be using greenboard) up that butts up to the shower right by the shampoo niche. But I couldn’t resist laying some tile on the floor just to get started.

Now you know what we’re up to this week. Are you working on any tiling projects? Did you labor over Labor Day or take it easy? We were about 80% labor and 20% time with friends … but 100% fun. I almost can’t stand how excited I am to start to put this room back together. I wonder if it’s going to turn out at all how I picture it in my head. 🙂

the final steps of the DIY shower pan … finally

August 28, 2014

Who’s sick of hearing about the DIY shower pan? :/

There’s not even one lonely comment on the last post about the pvc shower liner. Yeah, I realize this is a bit much for information about one project but I really did want to create a resource where people could follow from start to finish about the project since I had trouble finding one like that online. So thanks for bearing with me. And you can use the red pin it button (you might need to click over to read the post online to see the pin it button) to pin this image and it will link back to the first post about preparation so anyone looking to tackle this can do just that. Follow along from the beginning that is … in case anyone was thinking something more along the lines of “suffer through these blog posts”. 😉

And let’s celebrate another big step completed!! I’m so excited to get to tiling and really see this room come together … we’re so close. And I’m always a little bit nervous that what I envision in my little brain will actually translate to reality.

Now, for this whole shower pan deal, I think one of the main reasons why I didn’t find any one series of tips for this project that really worked for me is because there really are so many different techniques and processes that you can follow. The minute I found a useful tip and then researched it more became the minute someone else was saying not to do it that way. I read forums where people who were claiming to be professionals debated every aspect of creating a diy shower pan. So I decided to do it how it made most sense to me and seemed to be the most practical use of time and resources.

If you’re starting with your wall studs you can get started with this project by checking out our preparation and planning steps, and then creating a preslope and then laying the pvc shower liner. Now we’re tackling the final step which is the mortar bed over the liner.

Oh, and one more thing … I did every aspect of this project solo. As in, while I was home alone so I didn’t even have the option to get help if I needed it in a crisis. One brain of average capacity, two girl hands and three plus hours of an upbeat playlist to keep me going.

Now for the how-to:

Step 1 – Gather you supplies (affiliate links to products we use)

2 foot level
tape measure
hammer
marker
two pieces of 2 x 4, one about 12″ long and one about 18″ long (you could use a trowel also)
knee pads, we bought a cheap volleyball pair at Walmart a number of years ago and they still work great
rubber gloves
an empty bucket
puppy, optional

Step 2 – Install the screen piece of your three-part adjustable drain and measure the distance from the edge of the drain screen to the wall of your shower that is farthest away. This is because you are going to want to try to create a level line where you shower pan meets your wall and the longest distance from your drain to your wall will need to have the most amount of slope.

Also measure how high the top of your drain sits up from the shower liner you have installed.

Now, I am super sorry, but there is some math involved here. The height of your drain is your starting point and the distance to that far wall determines how much of a slope you need, standard is 1/4″ for every foot. My drain was about 1/2″ high and my distance was about 2 feet. So I needed to bring my slope to meet the wall about an inch higher than the liner and then angle it down so the depth of my slope came to meet the shower drain.

Step 3 – Determine your slope based on step two and use a marker and your level to indicate a level line around each wall of your shower.

What you want is your line to be level but your slope toward the drain isn’t necessarily going to be the same on each side.

For the sides that aren’t as far away from the drain the slope is going to be a little more severe. But better too much slope than not enough. And the reason you want to aim for a level line is to make tiling easier, if all goes well, we should be able to start our tiling on the wall with our first row of full tiles right on top of the floor tiles. If we tried to get an even slope and not worry about level we would need to make angled cuts on that first row of tile so they could sit flush to the floor tile.

I vote for more mortar work up front and less tile cutting in the end. Let’s just hope it works out that way. 🙂

Note of opinion: Ok, so here is where many professionals differed in opinion.

What comes first the cement board on the walls or the final layer of mortar in the shower pan?

I opted for shower pan first and cement board second. It was a pretty easy decision because one thing that pretty much every professional agrees on is to tile the shower floor first and then the walls so the water runs down the walls and onto the floor tile and not down the side of the floor tile with potential to creep behind the tile. With that same theory in mind I opted to complete the shower pan mortar bed first and then hang the cement board so any water that found its way behind my tile and onto my cement board would then trickle down to the top layer of mortar. If the cement board was installed first then the water would find its way down the liner, which is below the mortar. All of this is really in preparation for the worst case scenario, a leaky shower, so let’s hope we don’t ever have to test these theories in real life. 🙂

Step 4 – Mix your mortar, 1 part Cement to about 5 parts Sand Mix. We’re using the exact same products we used here except in a different ratio. The idea behind this is that this mortar bed will be somewhat porous so if water does creep under your tile it can seep down to your liner and then will head toward your drain thanks to your preslope. Again, we’re planning for, and hopefully working to prevent, worst case scenario.

Step 5 – Remove your drain screen and make sure you don’t cover up your weep holes while you create your mortar bed.

The arrows are pointing to two of the four weep holes that need to be left open in your drain. Again with worst case scenario, but if any water finds its way to this point those little weep holes will give it a place to drain. I found that the innards of a pen worked great to clear our any mortar that had found its way into those weep holes during the process. I used the exact same process to install this mortar bed as I did to make the preslope.

You can see from the picture that the mortar does kind of muddy up the liner, covering up your level line, so I kept my level close during the whole process and double checked level along the perimeter of the shower pan where I couldn’t see my mark.

I also ran into a little bit of too wet mortar in the end (I hadn’t mixed it well enough) and I was worried that it was so soupy that it would shift before drying … so I did something that would probably make a professional cry … and I just sprinkled on more dry Sand Mix and it absorbed right into the wet mixture.

We’re also getting into the evening with zero natural light so the photo lighting gets a bit wonky. 🙂

Here it is all dry the next day.

And I just took the flat edge of a trowel and scraped it over the top to remove any loose particles or bits that stuck out, just like I did with the preslope.

And we’re finally done with that project!!

Update: Now that your shower pan is complete check out these master bathroom renovation posts that might come in handy.

A few sheets of cement board, a little extra waterproofing and some detail work and we are going to be ready to tile!

Which is a far cry from where this room started. This is what used to sit in the exact spot where the shower is now.

Paneling … Nevermore. 🙂