We're DIY'ing A Shower Stall - Looking For Any Help/Tips
amck2
11 years ago
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Comments (7)
catbuilder
11 years ago
terezosa / terriks
11 years agoRelated Discussions
Leaking ADA compliant shower stall
Comments (6)It's hard to say if their repairs were correct because I don't know what the real problem was. Let's say it's a wet room. There is a continuous waterproof membrane on the subfloor, both in the shower and outside the shower. Then a mud bed. Then tile. That's a case where the thinset and mud bed under the shower tile can wet, and the moisture in the shower mud bed can "plume out" under the shower partition wall and wet the mud and eventually the grout and tile on the bathroom floor. A "possible solution" without demoing the shower wall would be to remove a several inches of tile on the bathroom floor side of the saddle along the entire length of the glass partition wall. Dig out the mud to expose the membrane. I'd even undermine the saddle along its full length by digging back the mud about 1/2" back along the length of the saddle. I'd want the exposed membrane to be clean. If the vertical wall of mud under the saddle was coarse and rough, I'd then patch that vertical wall of mud under the saddle to make it smooth. I'd want the underside of the marble saddle to be clean. I'd then use a waterproofing membrane to tie the exposed floor membrane to the underside of the saddle. I don't know what type of membrane you have, but it would have to be compatible with the floor membrane. If you can use a paint-on membrane like Hydroban or RedGard, paint it on the floor membrane, on the smoothed vertical wall of mud under the saddle, and onto the bottom of the saddle. That will connect your floor membrane to the bottom of the saddle. Any moisture in the shower floor mud will now be contained within the shower footprint. Now pack new mud in the excavated area outside the shower and re-tile. It's not a perfect solution, it might not even be the right solution because that may not be how your shower is built. But it's an idea of how I would consider making repairs were I the one doing so. The problem I have with them patching the area around the door is: If it was not the door leaking and it is a capillary thing going on down below, depending on how they detailed the added membrane when they made the repair by the door, they might have simply masked the presence of the moisture down below. ie, the moisture is still there. And more moisture is being added every time you shower. But by adding waterproofing on top of the wet area, they might just be sealing moisture into the bed. So the marble by the door may appear drier because it's above the new waterproofing, but the mud below the new waterproofing is still wet. If the area in front of the door where they made the repairs dries and the area to the left of the door where they made no repairs remains wet, that's an indication that what they did was a band-aid cover-up and not a true repair. Again, there could be several possible causes and several possible repairs because there are several ways to build a shower. I'm guessing and supposing. I'll be gone for a few days, good luck with it all!...See MoreNew Steam Shower - Any Planning Tips?
Comments (9)Yup, 2" per foot for the ceiling... ...porcelain over natural stone... ...and for the generator, different generators can be placed in diffeent areas. Some need to be co-located near the shower, others can be 10, 20, or 50 feet away. The generator also needs to be sized for both the physical size of the steam shower and the thermal characteristics of the six sides of the cube that make up the shower. You;ll find info on most manufacturer's websites. You want a VAPORPROOF membrane...not just waterproof, but vaporproof...behind the tile on all six sides of the shower cube. And all plumbing penetrations should be sealed to the membrane. You want your lights to be vaporproof too. You usually won't have a vent fan within a steam shower, it'll be located just outside the shower. Were you to have a fan within the steam shower, steam vapor drive can do nasty things....See MoreIs tile size of 13x26 too big for the wall of a shower stall
Comments (12)Porcelanosa tile are rectified, so 1/16th grout spacers will be used. I really like very small gaps between tiles, even on the floor, but that space will really depend on how good your walls and floor are. I know, tile setters hate big tiles, it's much harder to lay if walls or floor are not straight. So a lot of attention will be paid to prepare walls and floor to be as even as possible. Plus we'll be using unsanded grout with additive. I don't want to use too much of other colors, the tile itself is very nice. Since the room is very small we don't introduce a lot of color variations. We bought a few mosaic sheets, also from Porcelanosa, that has some light gray, white marble and crystal tile mix that will be used only in 2 big niches. We'll also thinking adding chrome trims between wall tiles, it looks very nice but Porcelanosa charges about $120 per 8', it's too much! I need to look online if I can find some less expensive alternatives....See Morebi-pass doors or hinged door on new shower stall
Comments (2)Thanks Archnista! You understood what I meant. I appreciate your feedback. To have one last go round on this to understand and compare my BF and I yesterday went to 2 places that I'm dealing with for the bath remodel and see if by staring at displays I could understand more. The first place was the place where I'm getting the cultured marble panels (and install) from. The other place is where I'm getting our Totos, all of our Grohe stuff, plus the lighting and some storage pieces. Both places have lots of displays, not necessarily exactly like ours is going to be - but close enough to depict the ideas. So, the cultured marble place says for a "swing out" door, we'd be looking at an "in-line" notched piece over the bench, then the "swing out" door, then another piece of "in-line". They do indeed do "pivoted" hinges, but we'd have to have enough depth to provide full swing in - that makes total sense. Also, the best possible thing is to have full swing on the outside or at least know what we'd be hitting - toilet for sure if we opened all the way. Also, the BF is worried that the wing out door would collect water and then deposit it on the floor, plus he feels that the swing in deal would mean splattering water outward if one of us enters or exits the shower while water is on (very likely since we do that tonight - i.e. shared showers.) The key thing that helped me was to see the "trim" aspects of the by-pass doors and in the trim type I like. It won't be too bad. I was picturing old fashioned big bulky shower frames of yesteryear. There's much nicer sleeker and contemporary stuff available now. Also, tomorrow the cultured marble guy and my GC are meeting over at the new house to go over the plans for the shower stall. At this point the bench is roughed in and by the time the cultured marble guy arrives I think the plan is to have the window roughed in too. And I think the plumbing values are also going to be roughed in. But I think they'll figure it out. The key thing is everything is down to studs and that means we they can get a clearer picture of what goes where, etc. Thanks for your help. I do think we'll wind up with bypass doors in a minimal frame trim and everything will be fine :) Cheers, --jans We enet...See More
Tim
11 years agoI went through the same thing about 1.5 years ago redoing our basement bath. Needed a corner shower, hated all the fiberglass options (have a Kohler fiberglass corner shower in the 2nd floor main bath and have only been 'so-so' happy with it).
But, I didn't want to do a tiled shower because tile frankly isn't the ideal shower material. Grout is porous, meaning you need to do a full waterproof membrane beneath it, making the tile more or less cosmetic etc etc and grout just gets dirty.
I went with a solid white (no marbling) cultured marble corner shower.
The base is cast out of solid material - there is NO give in it - it is SOLID all the way through. The walls are panels of 1/2" thick solid material as well - NOT flimsy fiberglass.
The base sits in thinset like a giant tile on the floor. The walls adhere to plain old drywall with silicone caulking (100% silicone). The inside corner is sealed with silicone and I have a trim piece on it to cover the seam which is also held on with silicone. This thing ain't gonna leak ever.
Then we had custom glass cut for it. We started with a shower curtain, but quickly decided the glass enclosure was worth it.
I'd strongly recommend looking at cultured marble as an option. Was the same price or less than a decent quality fiberglass kit and is way higher quality.
I don't have much in the way of pics but here are a couple.
Tim
11 years agobill_vincent
11 years agoMongoCT
11 years ago
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