Thanksgiving 27Nov08

Looking forward to having 4 days off of work, i decided that i could take advantage of this rare occation. Coupling that with the fact that most of my roomates would be out of town during this time, I made the decision to take on the downstairs shower! After watching at least 4 how-to-do-it-yourself videos online, a few home depot trips, and the thought of any other alternative activity involving the outside temperature, the adventure began.

Before - notice excessive moisture at the threshhold

Before

Rehabbing is like a box of chocolates, you never know what youre going to get.
After chiseling up the tile on the floor, there was another layer of older tile. i also found that the existing plumbing cuppeling did not have a tight seal. In fact it wasn't really hooked into the pvc pipe at all. I had to ditch around the existing pvc pipe, gaining about 1.5 inches of space to add the drain body.




Then the wall tile came off. The water damage was extensive. Whoever put this shower together the first time, failed to watch the online videos.


At the drain, you can see that i cemented on the pvc drain body to the existing drain pipe. I then stuffed a sponge down in to avoid anthing falling down. Then i mixed 80lbs of mortar and laid that flush with the drain body.


Another shot of the floor, with mortar.

Then i put up a plastic moisture barrier around the walls.



For the floor i used a think piece of plastic specially made for shower pans. It was kind of hard to manipulate since it is so think. Then i cut out the hole (carefully) and added another 2x4 to the threshold.

Then another coat of mortar

Saturday morning and still a long way to go. Luckily my friend Von came over the help. As we worked, We reminisced about how we first became friends. We tiled my entry way in Philadelphia together. Now almost 2 yrs later, we're still tiling.

This picture show the cement board in place.

Then we laid the perimeter tile on the floor (so i wouldn't be stepping on it) and then started on the walls.

More wall tile. Von and i had a pretty good system. He would cut the tile while i would stay in the shower and place each tile as them came.

This picture shows the floor tile completed. The drain was the most difficult part. Small cuts, and tight couners made this challenging. Also, i didn't exactly know what i was going to do here with the drain before i actually got to this step. I finally decided to try and get the drain flush with the floor by using a lot of thinset underneath and around the drain. I then tightened the drain down on the thinset, letting the excess flow out.

Almost done. With the grout in, i just need to seal it and do a few more finishing items and then the job is done.