The Shower Project

a few days before heading across the pond many months ago, we noticed the drywall in the ceiling in the study was drooping.  That can only mean one thing, the master bath shower was leaking again.  We had been down this road a couple of years ago, we knew then we would have to gut and re-do the shower at some point.  Of course these things always come up at just the right time.

Once I got back from all my worldly travels, we gutted the shower area of the bathroom.  and I mean, once I got back, like I got home late on friday night and saturday morning we got up and started tearing apart the bathroom.  Well, I should say, I started tearing apart the bathroom.  Some of us were out eating bon bons...

(M has baseball practice so D took him there and I stayed home and worked)

:)

ANYWAY..

Saturday we were able to get all the demo done, all the heavy cultured marble pieces thrown out the balcony into the backyard  (no, the dog wasnt back there)  We did learn something cool, Cultured marble will embed itself into the ground if thrown from the second story of a house.  HUH, I had no idea.

Before

After

Tearing it all apart, we did see that they did not do a terrible job with building the shower, there was a rubber membrane under the shower pan that ran up the wall (and on the wrong side of the shower curb so the wood there got wet) but the rubber membrane was not sealed to the drain properly.  When we took it all apart there was probably 1/2 gallon of water on the membrane, just sitting there with no place to go.  Overall not bad, I really expected worse.

little bit of drywall was moldy, but it was all going in the trash anyway.  Studs were all dry.  One area of the floor that was wet and stained, had to take up some floor tile that I didnt want to take up to make sure the damage did not go too far.  (you can see the wet floor in the above picture, and where I removed more tile than planned)

We also found out there is nothing holding up the edge of the tub,

All in all, not a bad day, destruction done, trash items cleaned up (yes, I needed a shovel to dig up a couple of the pieces from the yard) and the people cleaned up (luckily we have another shower)

So whats next?

Plumbing  (new fixtures for tub and shower)
Durarock on all the shower walls
Schluter Kerdi waterproofing on all the shower surfaces
Tile
Grout
new shower door
Fix whatever else I broke in the process of the project

DD