Just Remodeled the Shower... FINALLY!

I just completed the remodel of our shower, and I'm really very happy with the final results. Thought I'd give you all a little peek into the entire project. To begin, here's a couple quick shots of what our shower looked like when we started:


I hated the glass; I hated the brass; I hated how claustrophobic it felt inside; I hated how the shower head was positioned off to the left in an otherwise centered corner shower. My wife hated how flimsy it felt when she stepped inside it - she never felt comfortable because when the floor would flex she'd feel like she was about to fall. Did I mention how much I hated the brass?

And so, the demolition began:


I started by removing the door and both glass panels - a simple matter of just removing a few screws and cutting through the old silicone. I cut out the wall sections into manageable pieces and got them out of my way. By far, the hardest part was cutting out the fiberglass base: It's relatively thick and very heavy, and in such a tight space it was extremely cumbersome to get it out of there. It took five high-quality jigsaw blades to get it all out.

When I was done, this is what I was left with:


This is the point where the real engineering work came in. Not only did I have to clean all this up to create a solid base, but this is where I had to figure out what I was going to do with the plumbing.

One of my goals for this project was to re-position the plumbing so that the new shower floor could be installed much lower than the original, giving me just that much more headroom. After several days of experimental engineering, I decided that the few feasible options I came up with simply weren't worth the effort and I kept the original plumbing pretty much intact... all I added was a bigger p-trap and a new drain to match the new pre-sloped shower pan.


As you can see above, I removed the thin paneling on the wall between the bedroom and the shower (what I call the "back wall") but left the paneling on the outside wall of the rig in place. The back wall paneling I removed was in perfect condition but it was still too flimsy to be of any value, as opposed to the outside wall paneling that was still very strong and rigid. Plus, by removing the back wall paneling (and adding a new 45° wall in the inside corner of the shower) it gives full and easy access to all the plumbing if something goes wrong in the future by removing the paneling in the bedroom.

The 2x4's are pocket-screwed to the existing subfloor with generous amounts of Liquid Nails Extreme. As you might imagine, the subfloor and the existing tile floor are not the same height - the tile was 3/4" higher - so the studs had to be notched to accommodate the difference. Liquid Nails Extreme sticks to just about anything so it was the perfect glue to hold the 2x4's to the tile where I couldn't drill through for a pocket screw. (I could have, but I didn't want to risk snapping one of the tiles and having to replace it - there are electric floor warmers under there!)

Come to think of it, I did install one other new piece of plumbing: A Kohler Rite-Temp Pressure Balancing Valve and, of course, a valve handle and shower head to match. I wanted a new valve because the old one was extremely finicky to set the temprature just right, and also that it was 12 years old. When I tested this new one just an hour ago it had extremely good pressure, the temperature was easy to set and hold in place, and it worked as smooth as well-oiled machine. Plus, it has a master temperature control that you can set so that you can limit the amount of hot water that flows through... a real plus if you have kids.

Once the new subfloor was framed, I laid 1/2" plywood down on the top and sides and used a single 2x4 standing on edge for the new curb. In a house it's common to use two 2x4's sistered together for a wider, taller curb - which is code in many residential areas - but in the rig I wanted as much floor space inside the shower as possible and as low a curb as possible to elliminate the tripping hazard. The new subfloor plywood was laid with Liquid Nails Extreme and stainless steel decking screws, and the new curb was pocket screwed and glued around the edge of the new subfloor. It is unbelievably solid feeling, like standing on a cement slab.

I had to add some horizontal bracing to the back wall to support the new 1/4" Durock backer board. Again, in a house you'd likely use something at least 1/2" thick, but in the rig I wanted to add as little weight as possible, and the 1/4" thick material proved to be more than rigid enough to hold the tile while bouncing down the road. I very much wanted to use something like KerdiBoard for the tile backer, but it's very expensive and impossible to get in quantities less than 10 sheets (unless you're lucky enough to live in Canada). I needed only three sheets, and I couldn't justify paying for more than I needed just to save weight.

FYI: The old shower glass and fiberglass surround weighed 149 lbs; the new shower subflooring, tile, backer board, thinset and mortar weighs 181 lbs. I only added 32 lbs. of weight to the rig and that's a VERY good thing



With the walls braced and the new backer board installed, the next step was to cut the pre-sloped shower pan to shape and mortar it in place. After that, I pre-waterproofed the corners and seams and then waterproofed everything. It's a relatively simple procedure - you really just paint on a bunch of globs of waterproofing and roll it out smooth - but it's a tediously messy step as well. The hardest part is pre-cutting and pre-folding all the corner pieces of special fabric tape used on all the seams and corners and getting them to lay flat in the waterproofing goop, which tends to wanna pick it up and crease it because of how sticky it is. Yeah, I know... you can buy pre-shaped corner pieces, but once you get the hang of it it's pretty quick working doing your own. Latex gloves are an absolute must, though.

What you see in the photos above is Redguard, though Mapei's AquaDefense is the same thing and just as good... only it's green. I've used the green AquaDefense before and really liked it; the only reason I chose Redguard this time is my local Lowe's was out of stock on AquaDefense and my Home Depot right down the street had Redguard in stock. Either will absolutely do the job when applied correctly. Speaking of, it's applied first as a primer coat - diluted one part waterproofing to three parts water - then two full coats of waterproofing is applied with several hours drying time in between. I put three full coats on the walls and probably 5-6 coats in the corners.... way more than required in a house.

Technically, the manufacturer states you can paint waterproofing directly onto the styrofoam shower pan, but I chose to lay down a layer of added protection in the form of a waterproof fabric. It's "glued" to the shower pan using the same thinset mortar as is used for the tile... just trowel it out with a 3/16" v-notched trowel, lay out the fabric and smooth it all out. Then I re-taped all the corners (again) and painted everything red. It's waaay overkill on the waterproofing, but I'll sleep a little better at night.

The color variations you see are because some of the tiels are wet... I just water-tested everything

The mortar I chose for the tile is a modified thinset, meaning it has acrylic polymers added to it to make it stickier and more flexible - two things you really need when installing glass tile in a moving RV. It's applied directly over the red waterproofing and is pretty easy to use. I mixed it with the maximum amount of water allowed for proper adhesion just to make it a little smoother to trowel on. Because the tiles we chose were so thin, I was able to use a 3/16" v-notched trowel for the mortar bed - the same one I used on the waterproofing fabric earlier. In fact, you really can't use a trowel with bigger notches on such thin tile because the ridges of thinset will squeeze up between the tiles too much and cleanup will be a nightmare.

Speaking of thin tile, the tile we chose for the floors is a very thin ceramic tile; the wall tile is an EXTREMELY thin glass mosaic - just under 1/8" thick - both chosen to save weight and they were a lot chaper per square foot! The floor tiles were easy to cut on my wet saw; the glass tiles... not so much. It took a lot of water and a very slow cutting speed to get a clean edge, and even then it chipped pretty badly.

As for the grout, I used a powdered unsanded grout with a special additive for strength and flexibility. The grout has to be unsanded - sanded grout would scratch the glass - and all of my grout joints are only 1/8" wide and it can be difficult to squeeze sanded grout into a joint that small. The additive takes the place of water, and 48 ounces of additive is exactly the right amount to mix with a 10 lb. bag of grout. Plus, the additive makes the grout highly resistant to mold or staining and never needs sealing. YES! I also used color-matched caulking for the corners, floor and ceiling joints. It's flexible like regular caulking but it's indistinguishable from the grout so it blends right in.

Every example application we've seen for the glass mosaic tile was installed horizontally. We chose to install it vertically for several reasons: 1) it was different from normal, and so are we; 2) it gave the shower the illusion of being taller than it actually is; 3) it visually "flows" with the water pouring down the walls; 4) it solved the problem of how to wrap the long, thin glass tiles around the 45° back corner; 5) it required far less cutting... I only had to cut the tops and bottoms to flush it to the ceiling or the floor.

Here are the final results:

With the new curtain pulled closed.

It's been a long, arduous process, but one that I'm ultimately very happy with and very proud of. That said, I'm not in love with the wall tile - it's a little too black and white - but I'm absolutely delighted with the overall results. That my wife loves it is a huge bonus!

How much did it cost? Well, first... you have to remember that I did 100% of the labor myself; a professional would likely charge at least 3-4 times what it cost me. All tolled, from start to finish, the entire project cost $1,284.60, and I have several items to return that I ended up not using... the Durock styrofoam curbing, some extra glass mosaic tiles I didn't use, etc., so it'll probably end up right around $1,100... well below our estimated budget of $1,500.

What would I do differently? Well, a couple things: First, I originally considered rounding off the front corner instead of having it at a 45° angle but thought it would be too hard to work the tile around it smoothly. I think now I could have made it work and it would have made it more elegant, I think. Secondly, I don't love the bendable shower curtain rail... the joints between the sections of rail are proving difficult to smooth out enough for the curtain to slide smoothly. I thought it would be an issue but I imagined it would be easier to fix... so far I've been unsuccessful. Lastly, I might also reconsider using the Kerdiboard tile backer, even if I have to buy 10 sheets just to use three - especially since we had budget left over: It would have been a LOT easier to work with, a LOT lighter to install and 100% waterproof through and through instead of just on the surface I waterproofed. Other than that, it turned out pretty much as I envisioned it would.

And yes, there's plenty of headroom; I'm glad I didn't go to all the trouble of lowering the plumbing