Of the 4 bathrooms in our home, the last one I wanted to deal with was the upstairs guest bath. We almost never have any guests so it just doesn't get used much, and it was actually in pretty good shape. We had already painted the walls and all the cabinets inside and out, and replaced the toilet, pulls, light fixtures and hardware. We figured that some time down the road we would get a granite counter top and replace the sink and faucet, and ultimately redo the shower. A very strange issue moved the upstairs shower from 4th to 1st on the priority list.
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| BEFORE - Not cool, but clean and functional...or so we thought. |
Branelle does not use the shower in our master bath. It's a small, elevated death trap. She instead uses another shower that is actually connected to our master suite through my walk-in closet. Both are very dated - our house was built in 1980, and while it's been very nicely maintained, it hasn't really been updated other than what we've done to it. A few months ago, a horrible smell started emanating from the shower Nel uses. It was quickly apparent that some kind of creature had gotten into the wall or ceiling and died. Since we couldn't find out exactly where is was, we decided that this would be a good time to redo that bathroom since I was probably going to have to tear into the walls anyway. Nel started using the shower upstairs while I planned my demolition. Unfortunately a new problem surfaced when the upstairs shower was used - a leak! We noticed water stains on the ceiling below the shower she was using so we made the unpopular decision to attack the upstairs shower first.
It wasn't in particularly bad shape, so my first effort was to try to re-caulk and re-seal everything. Nel tested it and it seemed to make no difference. The shower had no access to the pipes or wall, so the only option was to rip it out and start over. Unfortunately, one of the good things about older custom houses can also be one of the bad things - they're extremely well built! I was expecting cement board behind the tile, what I found was actual cement.
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| Mid-demo. Notice the haze of cement dust? It's awful! |
It took some time and a lot of effort but I managed to demo the entire shower down to the pipes and studs. The water damage was obvious, but not as bad as it could have been. There were really only a few studs I needed to address and that was a fairly easy task.
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| Water damage. It could have been worse. |
The rebuild was a different story. I had estimated what steps would be involved in redoing the shower before I started and made a list on my dry erase board in the office:
· Remove door
· Tear out tile
· check for leaks
· Replace drywall
· Buy pan and hardware
· Install pan and hardware
· Tile shower
· Grout and seal shower
· Install new door (or reuse old door)
Seemed pretty simple. The first step was actually pretty simple - the door came out rather easily. It all went downhill after that. Branelle was out of town on business for almost two weeks so I figured it was a good time to do the work. Additionally, we were actually having guests come to stay with us in about three weeks time, so even more motivation. When I started busting out the old tile, I realized quickly that it was going to put up more of a fight than I had anticipated. The tile was adhered to a cement board which was attached to a concrete over mesh surface which was attached to the studs. It was a nightmare, and the dust about killed me, but I eventually got it out.
The water damage had to be addressed. I was afraid I would have to replace some studs on an outside wall - a difficult and expensive proposition - but I ultimately decided after consulting with my brother that I could just add studs to the rotted ones and everything would be fine. This was actually a fairly easy step. I simply cut 2x4s into support beams and mounted them where needed. My next step - checking for leaks - wasn't really an issue. It was clear from the location of the damage that the leaking had come from the tile itself, not from any pipes. Check!
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| New support studs. Seems like a simple fix, but all you really need is a solid surface to mount cement board. |
My next step was to purchase and install a pan and hardware. I decided that I certainly wasn't going to use a preformed shower pan like I had just removed, but was going to do a tiled floor instead. After doing some research, it was clear to me that doing a shower pan yourself is not a good idea so I called my plumber and he agreed to head over the next day. It would be a two day process for him to float the floor and then install a liner after it had dried the next day. The only thing he asked was that I have the new shower faucet and have a sill or step built before he got there. No problem on the faucet - I headed to Home Depot and picked up a brushed nickel Moen unit. The new step turned out to be another story. It sounds like an easy enough job - just stack a couple 2x4s on top of each other and bolt them to the floor. Unfortunately, I didn't have an even surface to start with. I had to rig up a base with a 'slight' angle towards the shower and then mount everything to that. It wasn't easy, but I pieced something together and the plumber came the next morning.
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| A new step. I even used my own brand of wood. :-) |
He did his thing over the next two days and I ended up with a very nice pan with a new drain installed and new pipes and faucet ready for cement board and tile.
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| Day 1 - A floated floor underneath the liner with a new drain installed. |
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| George checking out the new liner. We left it filled with water over night to test it. |
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| I took advantage of the overnight water test to re-insulate the walls and ceiling. |
Cement board - or drywall for that matter - is something that you can really do yourself if you want to, but it's kind of an art form, and on a shower with lots of small angles and having to use the much heavier cement board instead of drywall I decided to let the pros handle it. I called a guy and he sent a crew over the next day to cement board and also float a concrete base for tile on the floor over the liner that the plumber had set.
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| Cement board in and a floated floor with just the right amount of slope. |
It all went pretty well, but it was taking time and I didn't have as much as I would have liked. Nel and I had found a stone tile that we were OK with before she went out of town and bought every piece of it that Home Depot had, calculating that it was just enough to finish the shower. It was a clearance item (I was trying to be cheap) and had been discontinued. Just in case, we bought a glass accent tile for the ceiling. When the tiling started, I realized rather quickly that I would need some edge pieces with a bull nose for the step and shower edges. I found 7 pieces (probably needed about 30) at my local Home Depot. I planned to check out every Home Depot in southeast Houston on a Saturday morning looking for more, and I did. No luck. Not ideal, but not the end of the world.
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| Tile going in without any real drama. |
Tiling is pretty easy. It's kind of just putting a puzzle together, but sometimes you have to cut the puzzle pieces to fit. A good wet saw cuts tile like butter though and everything went pretty well. In a couple of days I had a completely tiled shower, but I still needed to mount the faucet trim pieces, put in a door, and seal everything up.
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| What's missing from this picture? We've tiled and installed the hardware and we've even managed to texture and paint, but no door. |
Nel got back in town on Monday the 5th, but we were both leaving town again on Thursday the 8th. We decided to look for a door in the few days we had and were disappointed to discover that the in-stock doors at all the home stores are kind of cheap looking and the nicer glass ones that you order take weeks to arrive. We didn't have weeks. Our company was arriving on the 16th. We were going to go with the best 'cheap' unit we could find in-stock but I asked Nel to run by HD and take a look at it on the 6th before I bought it. She informed me that they had a nice glass Kohler unit that looked like it might fit that someone had ordered and returned. I was playing golf, but skeptically agreed to meet her up there to look at it when I finished. She turned out to be correct - it looked like it would fit and it was even discounted a little since it was a custom order so we bought it.
We left town for a long weekend, but returned on the 12th, giving me about 4 days to get the shower door in. We also had to texture and paint the wall around the shower. It's not hard, but it's a step that takes a day or so because you have to let everything dry before you can paint. I started becoming skeptical that the door was actually going to fit and also skeptical that I could put it in properly and with perfect balance. I decided to call a pro. A friend of my brother's has a glass shop so I gave him a call on Tuesday and he agreed to do it the next day. He said he would call me back to confirm that evening but I never heard from him. I called him Wednesday morning and he said he would be on a job in my area and would try to bring a crew by later that day to put it in but I never heard from him again. I called him on Thursday morning and he didn't answer. I gave up on him and called a glass company out of the phone book. They said they could have a crew over Friday morning and I agreed. Nel and I were becoming less and less convinced that our "custom" door was going to fit so we decided to run to HD Thursday night and buy the off-the-shelf door that I knew would fit just in case so the guys would have something to install the next morning when they showed up if our custom door didn't.
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| AFTER - My trade show model showing off the finished product. |
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| My helper in the shower...and my wife too. George was pretty involved in this project (too much at times) but Nel skipped town for the majority of this one. |
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