Finally Tiling

The most nerve racking part of the whole project began yesterday for me. Tiling! It's nerve racking because it's something I haven't done a whole lot of, but I love the look of tile so it's quite worth it in my opinion.

My dad came over early Saturday to lend me a hand, his tools, and his brain. Since neither of us had ever tiled a shower floor, this was all new territory for us both.

We got the tile laid out and to our surprise we only had to cut some tiles out at the perimeter on only one wall. Otherwise, the tiles fit perfectly without any cutting. The one kind of tiling that we've never done actually turned out the be the easier of the two floors we tiled. Largely because of how few cuts and how faaairly square the shower walls were. We had to use some extra mortar towards the middle to raise the tiles a bit so it'd be flush with the fancy schmancy brushed nickel shower drain grill we bought. Otherwise, it was a very straight-forward job. Dad and I both were happy with the result. Plus, we had that floor hammered out by lunch time!

Then, there was the rest of the bathroom floor we had to tile. Cass and I decided to use a single row of the tiles from the shower floor as a border and then use 6" square tiles in a diagonal layout. Little did I realize laying tile diagonally in a rectangular space isn't as easy as it seems. This floor obviously had a lot more cut tiles in it, so while Dad manned the tile saw, I laid the tile. We had a whole bunch of half tiles to cut out, plus there was the toilet flange and the water line for the toilet that we had to cut around. In hindsight, I realize now that everything actually went pretty well, but for some reason I had this constant feeling like I was screwing up or something wasn't going well. The results speak for themselves though.



Not bad for my first tile job, eh? I stood on it last night and everything felt good and solid! That made me happy. Kinda makes me want to put tile floors in the entire house...but that'll never happen.

Shower Pan is Finished!

Finally! I'm making steady progress again!

Saturday was a bit of a slow day because I wanted to actually mud the shower pan, but unforeseen difficulties with the shower curb slowed things down a bit. More on that later. I started off getting the shower liner measured and cut. I think I bought a 6'x6'ish sheet of the liner and only needed about 5'x4'. As luck would have it, the leftover plywood I had from making the shower's subfloor was 5'x4' exactly, so it made the perfect template! After I got the liner cut and nailed into place, I installed the second piece of the shower drain that locks the liner in place and allows water to drain if it reaches the liner. Now for the fun part. I had to make the decision about the curb. I couldn't use the assembly I got from the Tile Shop because of how my shower floor is elevated from the rest of the bathroom floor. (See my post from Mar 5th) So, I had to improvise! I decided I'd make the curb myself out of wood. I knew that this needed to be a hefty chunk of lumber so I figured a couple 2x8s and a 2x6 (to accommodate the raised subfloor) would work.

So I cut the lumber to length, positioned it in the place it'd actually be sitting to ensure a perfect fit, and glued 'n screwed it together with 3 inch decking screws and liquid nails! By that time, I had a 4' long, 8" tall, and 4.5" thick piece of wood. Now I just had to figure out how I was going to cut the top of the curb to size with a slight pitch toward the shower. At first, this didn't seem like it'd be a problem. Then I realized..."Crap, I don't have a big enough saw to cut this whole thing!" The thickest my circular saw can cut is something like 3 inches and my table saw will only do a little more than that, but neither will cut 4.5 inches! So, I had to improvise on my improvisation. I cut 2/3 of the way with the tablesaw at a slight angle. I then cut the rest with my circular saw! I blew a 20 amp fuse in the shed's fuse box (and yes I mean FUSE box) with the tablesaw but I'd say it turned out alright after all. I thought I'd blown the motor on the tablesaw! I mean, the tablesaw's older than I am and the way it chugged down when it got stuck on a knot made me fear the worst! But, I replaced the fuse, flipped the switch, and it sprung back to life! What a trooper. Even though I seldom use it, I love that saw!

Next I installed the monstrous curb! I used up the entire tube of liquid nails on gluing the boards together and gluing it to the floor and walls. I also used 12 screws to lock that puppy in place. If that curb were a bridge, I'd have no problems driving my truck over it. It's that solid! All there was left to do was wrap the shower liner over it and nail that into place.

Sunday, I admired what I'd done the previous day for a little while and made sure it was dry. Then, I cut to size the shower pitch guide spokes that you use to make the slope to the drain in the shower floor. The only thing left to do was mud the shower floor and rather than talking about it, how about I just show you? Here it is!

Click the video below. There is sound, just be patient.


As you saw in the video, I nailed a board to the studs and strategically placed some nails to hold the camera in place while it took the video! I was quite surprised how well it worked!

Mudding the shower took me about 45 minutes. Hopefully next week I'll be able to hang the cement board on the walls and start tiling early May!

The Man with the Pan

Today, I venture into the unknown! Today, I use the right material for the job. Today, I got the pre-pan done! After last week's trial an error with the rapid set concrete mix, I went to the Tile Shop on Saturday and bought the concrete and ad-mixture they recommend for laying the shower's pre-pan. Sunday (today), I actually did it!

From the moment I sliced opened the bag, I knew this was going to go much better than last try. This stuff was more like sand, whereas the previous (unsuccessful) mix was more like powder. The video and materials I've watched/read about building a shower pre-pan said that the concrete has to be the consistency of wet beach sand and obviously this material seemed like it'd be just that after mixing in the water and ad-mix.

So I added the water and special ad-mixture they recommended, 4 quarts to one 80lb bag of the mix. The guy at the Tile Shop said that one bag covers 10 sq. ft. at one inch thick. After I poured out the contents of the bag into my wheelbarrow and put the water in, I gotta say I was a little nervous that I wasn't going to have enough. I have a 4x3 foot shower which means 12 sq ft, but the pan is only supposed to be 1 inch thick out at the edges. It tapers to 1/4" at the center where the drain is so that water can't just stand. It has to slope towards the center.

I grabbed my garden hoe and got cracking on mixing everything up. It only took a few minutes of mixing and a bit more water mid way through to get to the consistency I needed. Since the bathroom is quite small and I didn't want it to rain on my concrete, I had to do the mixing in the garage. This of course meant that I got to shovel the mix into a 5 gallon bucket and haul it upstairs! Joy of joys! Hauling nearly a hundred pounds of concrete upstairs in a bucket is one of my favoritest activities! Luckily I have two buckets, so I was able to haul the vast majority of it up the stairs in one trip. I was feeling pretty strong!

I got the stuff upstairs, and dumped it in place. My intention was to try and spread it out fairly well as I dumped it out, but trying to evenly pour 50lbs of concrete out of a bucket ain't exactly a walk in the park. Obviously, I knew I'd be spreading it out with the float in a minute, but in my mind at the time the less work I had to do at this point the better. Wouldn't it be great if the stuff just formed itself into a perfectly sloped pan when you pour in place?

I kept one of the buckets nearby while I got to work on molding the pan just in case there turned out to be extra material that needed to be removed. Somehow, I just didn't think that'd be the case though. Once I spread things out, knowing that you're supposed to pack it down, I was still a bit worried I wouldn't have enough. Beforehand, I had marked a chalk line one inch up from the floor on the studs, so I knew how high the edges had to be. Once I had the edges filled and packed to an inch high I worked my way inward towards the drain.

A couple minutes into it, I felt like I was getting that hang of it. This stuff was really quite easy to work with. Even for a newbie like me. I'm sure glad I remembered to put a sponge in the drain. I would've had a lot of concrete in the drain had I forgotten to do that!

This was my first shower pan and I'm pretty comfortable saying that I'm the first Eaton in my immediate family to attempt this. (I could be wrong though, my family's got a history of being pretty handy.) If this shower turns out, which I think it will, I'll make Eaton family history! Even if it doesn't turn out, I'll still make Eaton family history, just not in the way I wanted to.

The whole process only took me 1-2 hours. Oh yeah, remember how nervous I was that the 80lb bag wouldn't be enough? I ended up with about an inch of material in the bottom of the 5 gal bucket! I'd say that's pretty much perfect!