Master Bathroom Progess
Getting this portion of the project finished was huge for us. It was a great lesson in framing and installing a shower pan. We were so nervous about making the shower pan because it needs to be perfectly sloped toward the drain so water doesn’t sit in the shower. We found a kit and a video from The Tile Shop that helped quite a bit – I strongly recommend getting them. We decided to build our own shower pan because we wanted a tiled floor. Although you can buy premade pans that can be tiled, they’re about $700 and our shower required a custom-built pan to fit the space, making it even more expensive.
We did have a few problems when building the shower pan: 1) We used the wrong cement mix on our first try – it was way too sandy and it became clear that it was never going to become solid. 2) When we found the shower pan kit, it was in such high demand that we had to wait 2 weeks to get one. 3) Once we had the DVD on installing a shower pan, I confused it with a different DVD and returned it to Netflix in a Netflix envelope. I learned that they don’t send things like that back. I bet they were quite surprised to get “Build Your Own Shower” instead of “The Pursuit of Happiness.”
The framing went pretty smoothly. We built the walls on the ground and then lifted them into place. This system worked well, until we realized that there’s not single straight or even piece of wood in our old house. Getting the main wall in was a nightmare. It was 12:30 in the morning, I had to be at work the next day, and our heat had been turned off for some of the work that was going on. I remember pounding and pounding on the wall trying to make it fit in place, all while shivering from cold and exhaustion. Just when we thought we’d have to take the wall down and rebuild it (it was getting caught between the floor and a few ceiling rafters that were just a little lower than the others), it finally shifted into place.
The master bath is going to have two pedestal sinks and a double shower. We decided to skip the bathtub and create a really nice shower instead. I hope it doesn’t hurt us in the end. We’ll be tiling the floor and shower ourselves, which I’m really nervous about. But that step is a ways away, as you can see!