Well, we are chugging right along on The Great Master Bathroom Remodel here. Now, it's time to tackle the shower – THIS one:
Oy. That was THE WORST THING EVER (I mean, after 9/11 and world hunger and stuff…). It was tiny and cramped and moldy (!) and dark. It also faced right into the sink which you practically had to straddle when trying to get in or out of that thing. This Chamber of Grossness was one of the first things that The Boy and I agreed on when starting this renovation. And that thing was? IT HAD TO GO and it HAD to be replaced with a corner (or neo) shower (a MUCH smarter use of space) and it HAD to have glass doors. Luckily, we found one relatively easily at Lowe's and for an affordable price of just under $700 for everything. Woot!
Just a head's up, when you buy a pre-made shower stall – you buy each piece separately. So the door is one price, the walls are another, and the actual stall part is a third. We didn't know that in the beginning and it kinda messed up our budget calculations. Also, the pieces are big and kinda heavy. We ended up having to store the walls in the kitchen for a couple of weeks (WHAT? We're LAZY!). I think there's a groove in the floor from the many, many times I moved those suckers back and forth.
So! Le shower installation. First, we laid the shower stall on the subfloor and used a pencil to trace around it (and inside the shower drain). We actually did this wrong (GASP! I KNOW!). Originally we did this step before we put the drywall up. Mistake. The drywall ended up pushing the shower stall more into the room than we had anticipated so we had to retrace everything.
So, that minor mishap aside – next we adhered that sucker down. Before we even bought the shower stall, we got the tile for the floor and the pre-mixed adhesive. This happened on one of our many trips to ReStore – we stumbled upon a stack of really nice looking tile and got enough for both bathrooms. We also got the pre-mixed adhesive for really close to what the un-mixed stuff would have cost so we (being lazy) grabbed some of that, too.
This part was easy. We just opened the tub o' adhesive and laid down a nice layer of it within the lines we had traced (about 1″ thick). Then, we laid the stall down (and leveled-ish it…you need a slight decline toward the drain in a shower. I'd love to tell you more about this but it was The Boy's job… I was in the living room watching something about a serial killer.). To make sure that it stayed put, we layered a CRAPLOAD of the boxes of tile on top of it.
Next came the walls, this was actually pretty easy, too. The walls came in two pieces so to get them on the drywall, we used some silicon adhesive and blobbed it all over the back of both panels. Then, we each held one section and I stood still while he attached them together (using the pre-grooved notches). Next, we worked together and got them up on the drywall and stuck them into place. Done (we decided to caulk them later when we did the whole room).
So! There's our shower experience. We actually purchased the stall and the walls on one trip and the glass surround on another (we couldn't afford to buy them all at once). It worked out well since the Master Bathroom is so small that a fully finished shower would have really gotten in our way with the rest of the renovation.
Alright. Moment of truth! How many of you have replaced your shower? Did you tile or use a pre-made jobby? How was it? You know you want to share…
