Building a shower

This will be the first time I have ever built the entire shower without some professional help (with the exception of the rough-in plumbing of course!) Just getting the floor in is a multi-step, multi-day process.  It made me very happy that we used a cast iron shower base in the other bathroom!

So here is what the shower still in the framing stages.  At this point the plumber had run the water lines in the wall and the drain in the floor.  The shower is basically a 4 foot square with a corner cut off, a neo-angle shower.  

 So after we put drywall on the outside, it was time to deal with the inside.  First step is the pre-slope.  Some people say that a pre-slope is not necessary but my research convinced me to put one in.  I found that floorelf.com had really good instructional articles and I watched a few videos on Youtube.   First I mixed a bag of Quickcrete Sand and Topping Mix with half a bag of play sand.  Then I added water and mixed well until the mixture felt like wet sand at the beach.  You know you have the right amount of water when you can clump some in your hand and it will hold its shape.

First I put down a layer of thin set to glue the old concrete floor to the dry mix concrete.

 Then I formed the pre-slope sloping toward the drain at least 1/4 inch per foot.  For my shower that meant that I wanted the border to be 3/4 inch higher than the bottom of the drain.  The point of the preslope is to support the liner in a way that will guide water toward the drain.  If everything works properly, water will never reach this part of the shower.













Next comes the liner.  You run the liner edges at least six inches up each side with the only puncture being at the drain itself.  Then you install your cement board over the liner.  Don't screw too low or you will puncture the liner!  The next layer of deck mud will stabilize the bottom of the cement board.





At this point it is time to add the deck mud over the liner.  The point of this layer of deck mud is to support the tile  You want this layer to be thicker than the pre-slope, at least an inch or so.  Despite how flimsy the sand mixture seems when you are applying it, it does dry rock hard.  It took twice as much deck mud for this step so I used two bags of Sand and Topping Mix with a full bag of play sand.

The goal for the end result is that the outer edges of the pan be level all the way around.  This way your tiles will not appear uneven.  That means that some areas will end up with a steeper slope than others.  In my case, the area nearest the shower entry will have the steepest slope.

You can watch all the videos and read all the articles you like - they make this seem easy.  However, I found this part to be very difficult.  I could have spent hours on this trying to get the slope perfect and never achieved it.  You have to pound the mud into place to get it to bind together.  However, each pound moved the mud you already set so it was impossible to get things perfect.  Here is how I ended up.







The next step was to build the curb.  There are a number of ways to do this, but apparently it is not OK to use cement board because the screws will puncture the liner.  Some people say to use a metal lath but that seemed difficult and not very square.  I opted to buy a prefab curb kit at my tile store.  Since my curb was under 30 inches I only needed one kit.  This kit is basically a plastic form that creates a perfectly squared edge that fits right over your liner.  The instructions tell you to pack it with portland cement and sand mixture.  However, when I followed their recipe, I got a very sandy dry mud.  I packed that in and felt like I needed a wetter outer layer to give a clean finish.  I mixed up some thin set and plastered it along the outside.  After a couple of days of curing it feels as solid as can be.

When I came back to tile the bed, it was solid to stand on, but it seemed like the surface would easily brush away.  Apparently that is normal.  I went ahead and set the floor mosaic tile using thin set over the mud bed.  I was still worried because it was difficult to get the thin set to lie flat and not pull away from the bed.  Once that cured though the tile seemed very stable, so I guess it is OK.



Here is the final floor with tile and grout.  Now on to the wall tile.

Lunar bath floor

Now that the walls are complete and painted, it is time to do the floor in the kids' bathroom.  I am trying something new to me - epoxy flooring.  Or to be more specific - metallic epoxy flooring.  The guy we bought our gameroom couch from told me about the stuff and then I saw it on Pinterest.  It is pretty cool looking.  So here is a picture of the floor before I started (and before the walls were finished):

The first step is to prime the floor.  If there is already another finish on the floor, you might need to grind that off, but we had recently floated the floor and had fresh concrete so we were good to go.  Primer for an epoxy floor is really just a starting coat of epoxy.  The point of the primer is to seal up the underlying floor.  With a porous floor like ours, two coats are recommended.  You can use a clear epoxy primer but the black tinted primer highlights the final color better. 

 Installing this layer was pretty easy, I just rolled it on with a regular cheap paint roller, as recommended by the guy at the concrete store.  However, I think I would recommend against that. The fuzz from the paint roller stuck to the epoxy and created a lot of bumps in the floor.  For the second coat I tried stripping the loose fibers off the roller using duck tape.  I don't know if it helped or not because there were already so many fibers on the floor.  I was worried enough about this that I asked my husband to do a quick hand sand of the floor to knock the ridges down before I did the final coat.  Then I cleaned up the dust with denatured alcohol.  Each coat was supposed to dry for 24 hours but the first coat was still a little tacky at that point so I let the second cure for over 48 hours.   Rolling it was an easy way to apply evenly but maybe next time I would use an old lambswool roller that wouldn't shed.  The problem is that you throw away the roller afterwards and the lambswool rollers aren't cheap.

Finally when it was time to do the final coat I got everything ready to go.  I mixed 3/4 gallon of the epoxy in a color called Mercury.  I had a couple of accents, Pearl and Chestnut that I made out of the last 1/4 gallon.  In the end I don't think the Pearl showed up at all and I thought the Chestnut looked too rusty against the silver.

I got all my equipment ready too, I had a squeegee on a broomstick to spread the epoxy and a shower squeegee to do it by hand.  Also I had a spray bottle of denatured alcohol to add some effects at the end of the process.  I set up an area with lots of plastic to protect the floor, and of course my handy dandy spiked shoes.

So first I "line poured" the silver color in the area I was working, then I poured streams of the accent colors as well.  I spread everything first with the large squeegee.  Working through the whole room, I did the same thing everywhere.  Then I poured all the leftover silver right over the top.  Since the coloring in this epoxy is metallic, you can manipulate the look with the direction it is applied.  With my spike shoes on, I took the hand squeegee and went around the room making figure 8s.  Things didn't look that great right away but the epoxy will settle out and find its own level.  Once it had been about 20-30 minutes since application, I went around the room with the denatured alcohol, spritzing and splashing.  That is what creates the crater effect that makes you feel like you are on the moon's surface.

The floor needs to cure for a full 48 hours with no foot traffic so I did all this just before leaving the house for a few days.  I did wait a little while, based on my experience with bubbles on the countertops.  I was able to walk around and pop any bubbles that appeared.  They all came up within the first hour or so.  There were also a few random spots that the epoxy wanted to pull away from which left a black spot.  I don't know what caused this, but I went around with the last bit of epoxy in the bucket and drizzled more in each area.  That seemed to take care of the problem.  

Here is the dried floor.  The concrete guy recommended that I wax it a couple of times which I haven't done yet.  I did spill some water on it and it is completely impervious.  I have to say, the floor came out pretty cool and it wasn't that difficult.  It looks like you will sink into it when you first step into the bathroom!  It freaked the dogs out at first.  I'm sure after doing a few of these you could get really good and making the effects the way you want them.

Gameroom countertops

See those little pony walls to the left of the pool table?  We were looking for something interesting to do with them.  As you know, Pinterest is full of ideas and we found something to try - penny counters.  You can do a search on Pinterest or Google and get all kinds of examples and instructions.  I thought the best post was on this website: http://www.domesticimperfection.com/2012/05/ penny-countertop.  

Here is what we did.

First, figure out how many pennies you will need. I found this handy chart online. I had to build these countertops from scratch so I cut some MDF to shape with a little overhang.  Then I trimmed the sides with 1x2 cedar.  I set the sides a just a little higher than than the MDF to allow the pennies to sit slightly below the edge.  I painted the counter the same dark brown color that I used for the baseboards.  A dark background is necessary to highlight the coins.

Then get your pennies.  This doesn't seem so hard but I think it was the hardest part of this project.  Ideally you will find someone who wants to get rid of their penny collection and you can just buy what you need.  We tallied all of our pennies on hand and still needed about $20 more.  So, I went to my bank.  Easy peasy, right?  Wrong.  All of the bank pennies were brand new.  We decided that we liked the older pennies the best.  Many of the websites talk about how to clean the pennies to get them shinier.  I guess we are weird because we like the ones with "character."  Some new ones were OK but too many looked strange.  So my husband spent a LOT of time trying to tarnish them.  He tried vinegar, lemon juice, bleach, even oven cleaner.  Nothing really duplicated the old tarnished penny look, they just took away the new penny look.  If you like the turquoise color copper sometimes takes, oven cleaner caused a similar patina. We then tried to buy some from the grocery store, some won't sell pennies.  Of course the one that would had new pennies.  Finally we bought some from a family member out of their collection.  Whew!  Now what to do with all those new pennies.

We placed the pennies into place, no glue needed.  Luckily the pennies fit across without and partial pennies.  On the short ends we did have to trim some half pennies to fill in gaps.  We used tin snips that we had on hand but it took a fair amount of strength.

Then it was time to prepare the area.  First I taped around the wall with plastic sheeting to catch any runoff.  I also taped against the wall.  Then I mixed the first batch.  It's pretty easy to mix, it just takes a while to stir. I used an epoxy kit from Home Depot but if you have the time you can get cheaper epoxy online.  One batch was sufficient to cover each side so it only required two batches.  I then poured the epoxy in a thin stream over the pennies.  A few times the stream pushed a penny out of place but it was easy to fix. I used a postcard to spread the epoxy evenly and I used a foam paintbrush to spread the epoxy evenly over the sides.


I did all of this just before leaving the house, thinking I would let it dry while I was gone.  That was a mistake.  As I was leaving, I noticed a few bubbles rising to the top.  I went ahead and popped all of those but I wasn't able to stay long enough to pop the few others that showed up after I left.  Also the sides could have used  more attention.  When I returned the next day the epoxy was dried hard.  So the drips along the bottom of the counter were very difficult to remove without taking off some of the wood.  Ideally the drips could have been sliced off when the epoxy was set but not so hard.

Finally, just a note about how important it is that your piece is VERY level.  I thought mine was, but once the epoxy was set I can see that some portions didn't get as much coverage.  I am considering doing one more thin coat over the old one but am hesitant because I read horror stories about it not setting properly.  I will probably also need to sand the sides where you can see drip marks down the sides. Maybe I will just add a coat of polyurethane.

 Despite these small problems, the countertops are very eye-catching and make a great conversation piece.  I highly recommend this treatment if you want a fun surface cover.

Walls and ceilings

OK, we've been working on the floors so now it is time to get the walls and ceiling into shape.  

First the ceilings-  Popcorn is great but not on the ceiling!!  I believe this whole house had popcorn but the previous owners got rid of most of it.  However, it was still in the bathroom.  I did a lot of scraping and found that it was much easier if it was wetter.  I would spray, wait a few minutes and spray again.  Once that water soaked in, most of the popcorn just scraped right off.  You do have to be careful to not take off the underlying mud and tape though...

Then we spent a LOT of time hanging drywall in the two bathrooms.  Once it was done it was time to call in the big guns.    I do a lot of things myself, but taping, floating, and texturing drywall is not one of them.  It's not hard, it's just hard to do well.  

We covered the floors and the contractor covered the beams and other areas.  I am always amazed at how quickly these guys work.  It takes me forever to smooth, plus I always end up sanding.  They just make a couple of passes over the area and it looks perfect.  A little frustrating to watch!  So now just a little paint and we are in the home stretch!

And more floors!

So after floating the floors, we were ready for tile in the master bathroom.  We considered a number of choices ranging from gray to taupe to black.  You can see the charcoal color of the shower base in these pictures so it was important that they look good together.

We finally settled on my original choice of the black granite.  It is a really beautiful stone and feels really good on your feet.  It is honed instead of polished so it won't be too slippery like some of the polished marble choices we considered.  It was definitely not the cheapest tile but I think I will like it for a LONG time.

There's not much to discuss, this was a fairly easy tile job.  The width of the room was exactly five tiles wide so I didn't even have a lot of cutting to do.


I was a little worried that the granite would be difficult to cut since it tends to be a dense stone.  But actually, it cut easier than some porcelain.



One helpful tip I followed was about the way the tiles were staggered.  My normal instinct is to use a brick pattern.  However, since this tile is 12 x 24 inch, they are large tiles.  Therefore there tends to be some "cupping" where the middle is higher than the ends.  Match up the ends on one row with the middle on the next row create "lippage" problems.  To combat this, the recommendation is to stagger in thirds.  Since there is so much movement in these tiles, it is not very noticeable, but I think the trick helped.



I used a charcoal unsanded colored grout since the seams were very thin.  Done and done!