Posts Tagged Shower
Mud Wrestling, and how the ceiling turned yellow
Posted by Adam A. Ries in DIY, Home Improvement on July 13, 2014
Not really wrestling, more like flinging. Because taping and mudding all of the drywall seams actually went pretty smoothly (no pun intended), but I did throw a little mud. There is definitely a knack to mudding drywall, flinging it from one trowel to the other to keep it manageable and at the edge of the knife. I watched several videos with tips and step by step instructions. The main lessons I took from the videos were 1) be generous with the mud first, then 2) scrape off as much as possible. Number 3), professionals use paper tape for seams. 4) Thin coats are the secret to a professional looking mud job. As are the correct drywall knives.
That being said, I started on the wall where I knew most of the seams would eventually be covered in tile. I figured that would be the best way to begin.
Sheets of drywall are 4′ x 8′, so laying them sideways in a typical house with 8′ ceilings results in 1 seam in the center of the wall. My house has 9′ ceilings, which throws off that whole system. Since I know I want to tile the walls from the floor to plate-rail height (about 4′-6″ off the ground – to match the wainscot in the dining room), I put the 12 inch stripe in the center of the room where the two seams will be hidden once the tile goes up.
Even after the 2nd coat of joint compound, each coat is so thin that the tape is still visible. I cannot stress enough that scraping off the excess mud after each coat is the most important step. Lather on, scrape and scrape and scrape off. And all the joint compound scraped off can be thrown back into the bucket and used for the next seam.
I’m not sure if I had to, but I went ahead and taped the seam between the drywall and cement board along the shower walls. I haven’t fully made up my mind about how tall the tile in the shower will go. I’ve seen some examples where they tile clear up to the ceiling:
and some other examples where they leave anywhere from 12 to 24 inches of drywall to be painted:
I’m leaning toward leaving drywall to be painted. There’s going to be plenty of white, so leaving that much wall space will bring the paint color onto all 4 walls.
I also like how in this shower, they part wrapped the window opening with tile, and then above the shower head height, they wrapped the upper portion of the window to look like the rest of the home’s trim. I’m thinking this is how I will wrap the window, except using the style of trim that matches my house.
Now onto the second half of the title. As the photo below shows, the ceiling in the bathroom is white was white. The ceiling’s plaster is in really good shape, so I only wanted to patch the cracks and few small holes. But first I used a 3″ putty knife to scrape off the areas of chipping or peeling paint. And that’s where “areas” turned into a larger and larger section of peeling paint. Not just a small area either, a huge area. And it wasn’t just a few layers of paint, I’m talking like every layer of paint in the history of the house. It must have been nearly a 1/16 of an inch thick. Back to a really early layer of most likely oil base paint, possibly the original plaster coat.
It just kept scraping off, I never got to a point where I felt comfortable leaving it. An hour later, the entire ceiling was scraped. So that’s how the ceiling turned yellow.
But the good news is that I got all of the paint scraped off. Better now than down the road when steam from the shower might have caused it to peel or pieces to fall off. And although I did fill all of the cracks, I wasn’t all that particular. If the ceiling looks just a bit crackly and old, that’s fine. After all, every room should have something that helps show the age of the house. It will give it character. After just a light sanding on the ceiling and all the walls, the bathroom is ready to be primed.
On the Up and Up
Posted by Adam A. Ries in DIY, Home Improvement, Interior Design on July 9, 2014
Meaning, drywall and cement board! Although most of the bathroom was ready to accept wallboard once the plaster was torn off, I did have to do a little framing at what would be the back of the tub/shower. As you can see in this 3D model, the bathroom is about 5′-8″ wide, and a tub is only 5 feet.
That leaves me with a 8 in gap between the tub and the existing bath wall. So I framed in a full height wall to have a support to build a shower wall. In the end, I’m planning to trim it out with little cubbie cabinets to look very similar to this (only I will continue it all the way to the ceiling).
I used 2×2 lumber as the main section, and a 2×4 on the outside for strength (non-weight bearing walls can be constructed of 2×2 lumber – it’s how thin walls and even walls that house a pocket door are constructed).
I added lots of cross-supports between the studs and the wall behind. Although it was very strong on it’s own, this will be a tiled shower wall, and I don’t want any flexing to crack tiles or cause them to break off. The 1×4 sections between the studs are flush to the front of the framing studs. Just like the ones you can see along the top edge of the tub, these were a recommendation from a how-to video I found very informative on YouTube (Seriously, TileMasterGA: I have learned so much from his many videos documenting each thorough step of a quality and long-lasting bathroom renovation). These boards he recommended are to provide additional support to secure the wallboard as strong as possible, minimizing flexing. I just used scrap boards for these pieces. I also put them at the height where 2 sections of wall board will meet, to make sure the joint has this strong support as well.
This is what I’m super excited about. It’s my shower soap & shampoo niche. I’m not a big fan of these old metal shower soap trays (although they are very appropriate for the time period look I’m going for – pretty sure I tore 1 or 2 out in the beginning). Instead, I wanted a built in niche, so I basically built a window frame and secured it into this wall space. It will get covered in cement board just like the shower walls, then tiled to look seamless like this:
Only I don’t like how far apart the two niches are, I’m going for more like this, with just a thin shelf for small bottles and a bar of soap:
So back to reality. Wall board goes up pretty quick, and relatively easy. The only bad part is lifting the 2nd sheet up to the ceiling and holding it while driving the first couple screws to secure it.
Oh, and don’t forget to pre-measure & mark the location of outlets, light fixtures, or pipes. That meant taking the one sheet back down to measure, and then lifting it up and securing it all over again. Marking the location takes a lot of the guesswork out of using a RotoZip to cut out for the opening.
The cement board went pretty easy too. It comes in slightly smaller pieces (3’x5′ instead of a regular drywall 4’x8′), so it’s easier to handle and lift on and off of sawhorses.
Cutting the cement board is not as easy as cutting drywall. Instead of scoring with a utility knife and snapping it apart, I used a metal cutting blade in my handheld jigsaw. It did a little tearing out along my cut line line (after all, there are pieces of aggregate compressed into the board just like in cement), but it’s a raw edge so that’s ok. I didn’t have any trouble drilling holes for the tub and shower faucet or the mixer valve. I just used the matching size hole saw bit and it went through just fine. For attaching the cement board, the lumberyard sold me special ‘cement board’ screws that are recommended. They have different threads than drywall screws and a larger head, which prevents them from pulling through the surface too far. They barely countersink themselves and that holds the cement board tightly against the wall studs. Same as the floor, the shower walls are super string and rigid, and just about ready for tile!
And here’s the bathroom all boarded up:
I can’t even begin to express how good it feels simply to have walls again!
Oh, except the niche. I still have to cut the smaller pieces to fit inside that area.
Don’t look for regularity in the screws. There isn’t any. I put a screw wherever I felt it needed one. And especially don’t count how many holes there are without screws. Screw guns are so finicky + extremely hard old-growth lumber wall studs = a lot of stripped out screws. But the next step should fill and cover all of those. Bring on the mud!
PVC You Later
Posted by Adam A. Ries in DIY, Exterior, Home Improvement on July 1, 2014
As in, I’m done with the PVC drains and vents! What a relief. I had most of the rough plumbing done a few weeks ago, enough to install the subfloor & underlayment, but I still had a few things unfinished. So over the past week I rough plumbed for the tub faucet, shower head, and shower mixer valve.
The extra notch out of the wall stud (don’t worry, this is not a load bearing wall!) is because I second guessed myself about the height of the mixer valve and shower handle. I originally put it at a height that felt comfortable when standing. But then I found that the typical standard is really really low, so I moved it down. After showering just this morning, I realized that as a 6′-4″ man, I don’t want to have to bend down to reach the shower handle. So I think I’m going to move it back up. I did decide upon a very tall height for the shower faucet. I believe it’s time to rid myself of this plague that has troubled my showering experience for the past decade:
Seriously, I can’t even remember what it feels like to wash my hair without ducking or bending half over. I cannot wait.
I also finished the tub drain & overflow – which meant carrying sliding the tub into place – and then I connected all 3 of the bathroom drain vents and ran that vent pipe up through the ceiling. Above are the three vents coming through the floor, connecting to a main vent, and then going up through the ceiling. Once through the ceiling the pip transitions to 2″ in the attic before exiting through the roof. And then bathroom was entirely ready for wallboard!
Based on everything I’ve read, I decided upon cement board on the walls around the tub/shower as a backer board for tile, but the rest of the bathroom walls will be moisture resistant drywall – often called greenboard. My brother-in-law helped me hang a few sheets of drywall Saturday, so the west bathroom wall is covered. I’ll do the same on the east wall. The south wall is staying plaster – with some patching around where the new light switches are. The bathroom is 5’8″ wide, and the tub is only 5′, which leaves me with a narrow space on the wall opposite of the shower head. After some Pinterest searching, I came upon a great solution to use this narrow space- almost the exact size, too.
Not my choice of colors for the towels, but you get the picture. It turns what would otherwise be unusable space into a little bit of storage. It will be fun framing it out, but if I do it right, it might also serve as handy access area to the back of the breaker panel in the wall behind (for future electrical updates needing additional wires).
So to recap, below shows the different stages from just about a month ago to where I am now.
I can almost see the finished product (thanks to the hours I’ve spent on Pinterest!).
I actually got a lot done this week – kitchen sink, tub, part drywall, purchased wall tile for bathroom. But the biggest accomplishment was not mine, but rather what Dennis was able to get connected for me. The process itself is worthy of an entire upcoming post – wet floor, curse words, and a return trip to the hardware store – but for now, I’ll leave it at a single photo and one last sentence. I have hot water.
Up and Adam [Ries] 