redoing another shower

[Tom King]

In the rental house.  It's a cold rain here today.  BIL and SIL came back wanting to help with projects, so we decided to tackle this since it's supposed to be so cold this week.  We got by with this last season for the rental house 3rd bathroom, but I've just been putting this off.  Tear out will be the worst part of the job.  This green fiberglass shower barely had enough room in it to turn around, not to mention how ugly it is.  It's probably from 1974.

The plan is to turn that whole end of the bathroom into a shower, with no door or curtain.  It's a thick mud bed with metal lath in it.  It took BIL and me all morning to take out the tile surrounding the shower and that end wall.  I'll wait until I get it all out, including that part of the floor out from the shower before I take more pictures.  We're going to run the tile all the way to the ceiling in the shower and on that end wall.

We're not likely to get any renters now until April, so it won't matter that it's torn up for a while.

The ceiling in that bathroom is the last bad one left, so it will get covered with beaded board and crown molding.

 

[Tom King]

Here was the last one I did in that house coming up on two years ago.  This one was a green fiberglass bathtub.  There is still a Harvest Gold fiberglass bathtub to redo also, but I'm only going to do one at the time.  Other projects are on hold but this will make a good Winter time one.   I"m making them all curbless.  We're getting 100% repeat customers from people in wheelchairs and they're easier to keep clean like this anyway.  Since the bathroom tile floors are on built up mud beds, I can take part of that out and slope the floors in the showers.  I wish that I had run this tile all the way to the ceiling, but I lost too many of those bullnose tiles around the top of that bathtub.  This morning I was much more careful to save enough to make the transition with.  This old tile has probably been discontinued for decades.  No choice but to use new tile in the showers, but I need those edge pieces of the old stuff. 

[Tom King]

We finished demoing the floor this morning.  The 50 year old inch thick mud bed on top of the slab was as hard as granite.  I have no idea why they built it up that thick on top of a concrete slab floor, but they did me a favor by doing it.  That will allow me to slope the new shower floor down to the drain without having to break up the harder concrete slab.

To carve out the edge where the new floor will meet the old without any kind of threshold I cut it with a diamond wheel on a Dremel.  When doing that kind of work I use supplied air and a shop vac to suck up the dust right as it comes off the Dremel wheel.  It took three of the $28 diamond wheels to make the cut and burned up a Dremel motor.  The main part of the mud bed was broken up with a big chisel and four pound hammer. 

To finish next to the slot cut by the Dremel wheel, I switched to a 1/2" wide carbide tipped chisel and 18 oz. mallet.  That was my first time ever using a carbide tipped stonework chisel.  I've had it in my stoneworking tool boxes but never used it.   It was unbelievable!!  It cut the tile and mud bed like a sharp woodworking chisel in hardwood.  It was like I learned a new skill that I can use for stonework in the future. The carbide tip was as sharp when I finished as it was when I started using it.  I'll be buying more sizes of them when I have stonework to do.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00SOVSF1S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Next is the bad job of cutting up the fiberglass shower.

 

 

[Mark J]

Since carbide is brittle, I'm surprised to learn that it makes a good stone work chisel, but there you go.

[Tom King]

I noticed on that Amazon page that about half the reviews said that it broke.  I think they were hitting the chisel too hard.  I was just pecking with it and it cut the hard stuff like butta.  I had always just thought that the carbide would mainly last longer than the steel masonry chisels that I have used forever, but it cut like a different type of work.

[Tom King]

I cut the shower up this morning and it's out of there.  It took three oscillating saw blades, supplied air, and a HEPA bagged shop vac to suck up the cuttings.  I went slow enough for the vac to suck up all the fiberglass dust.  Earplugs under earmuffs inside the supplied air hood, and it was still loud in there. 

The new shower will be 4' x 6', which seems like it will be a Lot better than that fiberglass thing that there was hardly enough room to turn around in with the built in seat.  We can't figure out why they did all the other well done tile work and used those fiberglass tubs and showers.

I've decided to leave the last one for next Winter.  One of these is enough for me for one year.  Plumbing left for tomorrow, but we have everything set up for it ready to go.

[Tom King]

Pam decided she wanted a rain shower head in the ceiling, so I ordered another valve and am still waiting for it to get here.

To stop my BIL worrying about how we were going to deal with the blown in  insulation above, I decided to put the pipe in for that showerhead this morning.  I didn't know how I was going to do it until I got into it.  A section of the sheetrock ceiling was cutout where I needed to work but I didn't take it down.  I pushed the cut square up, and put some strong cardboard under it to keep it supported.  We lost very little of the loose insulation like that.

I put a piece of 2x between the ceiling joists to attach the threaded fitting to in the center of the shower ceiling.  The elbow was soldered onto the vertical pipe and I pushed the elbow up through the insulation to drop the pipe back through the hole I drilled in the top plate.  The eared threaded elbow was screwed into place and the pipe measured to make the horizontal run.  Screws taken back out holding the elbow and that elbow was soldered to the pipe for the horizontal run.

Once that cooled it was put into the elbow on top of the wall and the threaded elbow screwed back in place.  That elbow was shielded for safety with a mat made for the purpose.  I had wet everything up there with a spray bottle of water before putting the blanket back in place.  That last fitting was soldered and cleaned and we were done with that part.

Most of the time I can't tell you how I'm going to do something.  My friends, like my BIL, don't understand why I don't worry about such plans and worry me more about how I'm going to do it than I spend thinking about it.  I call it the attack method.  I just attack and get it done.

We have the beaded board cut to fit and painted ready to go up. You can see that it's needed.  It will go up right over that awful stained ceiling. The next step is getting some wiring up there for recessed lights.  BIL asked me how I was going to do that.  I just laughed.

[legenddc]

Looking good! I’m amazed at how well those mats work. I either picked up a second one after my last plumbing job or meant to. Will have to check before I work on anything else. 
 

How do you keep them in place? I threw some thumbtacks in my plumbing box but they tend to get a bit distorted. 

[Tom King]

Mine has a couple of grommets in it, but I don't ever remember using them.  For that one joint up in the ceiling I just used what was at hand.  A tape measure on one side and a short piece of pipe laying there for the other side.

We plumbed up the one valve I had with the regular shower head on the left side.  The other valve came on Friday but I haven't been back over there yet.  We had a couple of really nice days so Pam and I cleaned up the screened porch and had the two litters of puppies out there playing.

 

[Coop]

Obviously not your everyday puppy mill! Not that I would have expected less! The swing is really cool! 

[Tom King]

That swing is a kids' swing off Amazon.  I think the number of puppies that get carsick after playing on that when they are little has gone down to almost none.  In fact, I can't remember hearing about one that did.  Almost all have long car rides or plane rides to go to their forever homes.  Those puppies are five and six weeks old.

Maybe back to plumbing tomorrow.  It's been decades since I've done any copper plumbing to amount to anything.  It's really a slow process, especially with this maze of a plumbers nightmare.

[Mark J]

They're very cute.

[Tom King]

Finished up the plumbing for the two valves and have it ready to cut the water off and redo the pipes I put in temporarily a while back when I redid the washer hookup behind the shower in an adjoining wall.  The left valve (offset to the left so you can easily turn the water on before you get in the shower) is to a regular showerhead location and the right one to the rain showerhead. That was good enough for me on a Sunday morning, so I left the next stage where I have to cut the water off and drain the pipes for another day.  There are probably more joints in this one wall than in a couple of regular bathrooms.  A real plumbers nightmare but it's getting there.

It would have been quicker and easier to do it with PEX, but I know of some copper pipes troublefree and still working after 91 years, all the rest of the pipes in this house are copper, and I don't ever want to have to go back in this wall.

 

[Tom King]

Finished up the water line maze this morning. Will have to wait for a missing oddball fitting to get here tomorrow for my air pressure test rig.  I don't want to pressure test it with water.  No pipes rubbing against another pipe or wood to make noise.  I won't say I'm glad this is done until it tests with no leaks.

 

[Tom King]

This morning all I accomplished on it was setting the new drain to the proper height and level.  The vertical drain pipe under the fiberglass shower was not anywhere close to being plumb.

I had wanted these things before, but the USA made versions have always been high dollars and I got by without them.  This cheap from China one worked like a charm for getting the old pipe out of the trap hub.  It left a perfectly sized hole for a new pipe to go into, but that would have still left my pipe coming up out of plumb. 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CMCNST86?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

I cut the 2" pipe the length I needed and glued it into the drain fitting.  After taking the drain screen out I clamped it to a sawhorse outside the shop and reshaped the pipe stub with a metal cutting burr on a die grinder.

The glue smells so strong that I couldn't stay in there to do more work on the shower today.  Hopefully it will be gone tomorrow.

UPS usually shows up around five, so if the fittings I need come today the pressure test on the water lines will be done tomorrow.

 

[Tom King]

It held about 70 psi since this morning, so it looks like that part is done.  Wet spots on back of that sheetrock from bubble test solution.  I once had an air leak so slow that the pressure didn't drop fast enough to look like a leak, and it didn't show up until I turned the water on.  Now I like to bubble test before throwing the water to it.  It's a pain to try to solder copper pipes that have had water in them. 

 Water is back on, and water heaters back on.  I hooked a water hose to the shower outlets and flushed the lines out for a while.  Should be good to go.

That test gauge rig normally fits on an outside faucet for a water hose.  The fitting I was waiting on was a male GHT (garden hose thread, sometimes called 3/4WH) to 1/2" NPT female.  That particular adapter has 1/2 female and 3/4 NPT on the outside.  I think I had stolen the one I had on it before for the sharpening sink, but didn't want to take it back off of that so just waited a couple of days for Amazon delivery.

Maybe form the floor tomorrow.

[Tom King]

Finally back on this for a little while this morning.  To have something to register the outer perimeter end of the screeds on, to get the taper down to the drain uniform and level all the way around the outside:

I ripped some 1" wide strips of Masonite type hardboard.  Mixed up some bedding mortar pretty soft, and put some around the perimeter one side at the time. A strip of hardboard was tapped down on top of the soft mortar using a cheap plastic level to the height I wanted it relative to the old tile floor.  Each wall was run like this using the level to get the next run down to the same level as the last.

The drain is adjustable in height by the part attached to the grill being scew adjustable for height.  

The next step will be to lay the bedding mortar all over the floor for the tile to be laid on that using thinset.

The hardboard strips are taken up after the bedding mortar has set up some but not enough to bond to the strips.  Any squeeze out was trimmed away before the strips were taken up.

I hope that makes sense.  It goes along pretty fast if the mortar is made the right consistency.  Without this to guide the screeds it would be a big job to get the next step poured just right.  Without the hardboard strips it would just be a mess using only a level and pulling it up without messing up the mortar and keeping the level clean.  This makes it easy.

 

[wtnhighlander]

Do I understand correctly, the strips help establish a flat curb at the desired height, which you use to guide you screed for the actual floor? I assume one end of the screed rests on the drain, and the other on the curb?

[Coop]

Tom, I’ve been following this but perhaps not close enough. Your last post, second pic, there seems to be a sub-floor and an area below. What I called the sub-floor resembles sheetrock which I’m sure is not. Just curious to how that will be treated? I bet if I stick around long enough, it will become obvious. 

[Tom King]

On 2/9/2024 at 7:41 PM, wtnhighlander said:

Do I understand correctly, the strips help establish a flat curb at the desired height, which you use to guide you screed for the actual floor? I assume one end of the screed rests on the drain, and the other on the curb?

That's exactly correct.  This is not something I invented, but the way they used to do tile work thick mortar beds before they came out with the sheets of backer board.  They would use such strips of Masonite in the vertical corners in a too thick bed on the whole wall, tap the corner strips in plumb, and screed the excess off from top to bottom producing a perfectly flat wall.

There is a strip under that level in the picture. It's tapped down to the level I want it with the hammer, and trimmed up with the margin trowel.

It's really very easy to do.  Without the strips the level would just make a mess.

This level is a cheap plastic level I bought from Lowes as four feet long and cut it down to three feet for the 3' x 5' bathtub conversion job I showed a picture of earlier.  The plastic cleans off the wet mortar easily with a sponge and bucket of water like you keep all the other tools clean as the job goes along.

[Tom King]

On 2/9/2024 at 9:18 PM, Coop said:

Tom, I’ve been following this but perhaps not close enough. Your last post, second pic, there seems to be a sub-floor and an area below. What I called the sub-floor resembles sheetrock which I’m sure is not. Just curious to how that will be treated? I bet if I stick around long enough, it will become obvious. 

No subfloor.  This house was originally some kind of farm building with a very rough concrete slab floor.  They knocked a big hole in it to get the plumbing drains in when it was converted into a house when the lake was formed in 1963.  No one left now knows any more details than that. 

The depressed area is where they broke that hole to get the shower drain in.  The DWV lines were filled in around and under them with sand.  I put some surface bonding concrete (the dark gray) in the hole to give the mortar bed more support.  Surface bonding concrete is not made for this type of job but it has fiberglass fibers all in it, and I use it for all sorts of things it wasn't intended for.

The insulation you see in the picture is dirty because it had a thick mortar bed over it with metal lath nailed to the studs.  

The 2" PVC trap you see in these pictures is from when I redid the washing machine drain from one that didn't work.  The laundry room is on the other side of the wall behind the shower.   

 

[Tom King]

This place is proving a pretty big hit with rentals.  At first we thought it would only rent in the Summer.  For the coming season we're booked solid all the way back through April and May, and even back into March.  I went to Vrbo and AirBnb and blocked out February so no one could book it while I'm working on that shower.  Before the bookings coming in this week, I didn't think of that as a possibility.

[Mark J]

40 minutes ago, Tom King said:

This place is proving a pretty big hit with rentals. 

Congratulations on that.

[Tom King]

It's a good excuse for me to not do the last one this Winter too.  I don't really dislike doing this, but it's not enjoyable work either.  Now I can wait until next Winter to redo the harvest gold bathtub without having to hear anything about it.  It might push too close to someone wanting to rent it.  I have to work this sort of thing into everything else that I have to do and don't want to get in a hurry to do anything.

[Tom King]

I been waiting for Pam to be able to help me form the floor, but she's been so busy with puppies leaving that she can't get away to amount to anything.  I came up with another plan.

I was planning on doing the whole floor forming in one operation, which included filling up the pretty good sized hole that had been knocked in the original slab to get the drain under the fiberglass shower.  I decided to fill most of that up, only leaving a half inch or so to get it to the final level.  I was thinking that would save a lot of time, and not take too much of Pam's time.

Normally I want a helper to keep the screeds clean as I use them with a bucket of water and sponge.  After using this bedding mud to form the perimeter guide and the filling today of most of the depth of the big hole, the bedding mortar is so easy to work with and slow to set up that I think I can handle the final pour by myself.

This is really nice stuff to work with.    https://www.homedepot.com/p/reviews/Custom-Building-Products-CustomFloat-50-lb-Brown-Bedding-Mortar-and-Brown-Coat-CFT50/100200705/2    The bad reviews are from people who tried to mix it like other products that you mix really dry.  This stuff likes to be a little bit on the soft side, and then works like a dream.  Plenty of time to work with it before it starts to kick-much more than thinset.