The Saga of the Wood Paneled Shower - Part III

Several people have asked me how the downstairs bathroom rebuild has been going and I'm here with an update! Before I continue though, let me say that this blog is now weekly. I'm posting every Thursday with the occasional special edition. It lends a nice feel of consistency and therapy and a good shot that I've done enough every week to give an update on the state of Isthmus House.

We left off in that last installment of the saga of the downstairs bathroom with new cement board, greenboard and some RedGard over that for waterproofing.

As I mentioned in that post, my sister and I also pulled the floorboards in hopes of having it to patch and feather in a few places around the house. All in all, we probably salvaged about 15-20 square feet. I'll take it!

Once the floor was up, we also found that the subfloor sloped about 1.5 inches in some places and we didn't stand a chance of laying tile over it without it cracking, even with underlayment. That meant a new subfloor needed to be poured. Here's how the process went.

First, we laid out thick plastic (Or, as my mother would say, Visqueen. I have no idea if I spelled that right.) and stapled it down. When the stapler stopped working around midnight, we got creative and folded and taped down the spots we were nervous about (this part isn't shown in the photo!). We also built mini walls using left over cement board around the hole I needed to leave for the tub drain and plumber. Pretty, no?

Once the plastic was firmly down, we mixed 5 40-lb. bags of self-leveling subfloor. It was a little pricier than the rapid-setting stuff but I was worried that we wouln't be able to move it quickly enough before it set.

It turns out we needed 9 bags to get the subfloor fully spread out and truly level. We didn't find this out until about 1:30am so it was a 2-day process. That said, we were really happy with how it turned out after cutting away the excess plastic around the edges with a utility knife.

I chose subway tile for the shower surround for several reasons the best of which are that it is period correct and cost effective at about $2/ sq. ft. Subway tile acquired its name having been used in the Heins and LaFarge architectural design of the New York City subway stations when they opened in the early 20th century and have been a mainstay in period restorations as well as coming back into popularity relatively often ever since. 

  

Laura and I started subway tiling the window wall about 8 hours after pouring the rest of the subfloor. I'll admit that my side drooped a little bit. We were about 4 rows in on the window wall when she noticed and fixed it since I just couldn't take it at that point.

We ended up applying thinset to both the wall and back-buttering (putting thinset on) the tiles themselves. As you might imagine, that takes a while and we finally called it a night around 2 am. 

I think it looks brilliant. There's a little detail surprise you can't see in the photo and it's not grouted yet, but that's coming soon. Stay tuned for another update as the Saga continues!