With the tiler coming on Monday, there's only one more day (Sunday) left to finish getting everything ready for him. I guess the one drawback of
all that waterproofing is that it took a long, long time to do....so now I realize that we won't have the whole bathroom built out and waterproofed by Monday - there's just no way I can get it all done.
Because the tiler will be starting with the shower, we definitely have to have at least that finished by Sunday night, no matter what. This is starting to feel a bit like deja vu! When we were approaching our other big milestones (
finishing the roof and
turning the heat on), we ended up doing similar scrambles, with late nights to get everything done. This is a trend I would definitely prefer not to see continue...
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| Feb 18th - starting point for the final push |
The first task is to paint the waterproofing membrane on the plywood floor. We had to do this late Saturday night because it needs to dry overnight if we want to continue working on Sunday afternoon...
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| Starting to paint the rubberized waterproof membrane on the plywood |
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| The completed shower floor membrane - now it must dry for 24 hours |
We did get to enjoy a nice Sunday brunch, and by the time we finished, the membrane was finally dry....so, time to attach the shower base to the plywood. This base is a large, single piece of the Marmox board (an insulated waterproof tile-backer) that's designed for the floor: it's tapered to allow proper water drainage, and has a specially prepared hole that designed to fit with the drain as part of an integrated system.
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| The waterproof shower base will slide into this gap between the floor and wall |
To attach the board to the plywood, we're again using the flexible, waterproof (of course!) tile adhesive.So after mixing up another batch of the adhesive, I carefully applied it using a notched trowel, and slid the floor board in place. I had one and only one shot at this: the board was specially ordered so we only had the one, and I had already cut it down to make it fit perfectly. So I was nervous...if anything went wrong (for example, if the mortar dried before I was finished), we'd have to start all over again and we wouldn't be ready for the tiler...that would be a disaster! I had put a lot of time and effort into doing the prep work to make sure there would be no problems, but you never really know how something is going to go until you actually do it. In this case, happily, all that prep work paid off, and everything come together beautifully!
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| Sunday, Feb 19th - Afternoon - Applying the adhesive to the plywood |
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| The adhesive fully applied |
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| Sliding in the board |
With the board in place, the edges and joints were quickly siliconed, and special attention given to the two-part drain.
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| The board (shower pan) fixed in place with silicone around the edges |
The final tasks for the night involved closing up the area under the shelf/ledge, applying the final waterproofing, and fastening the large piece of wood that will act as the lip and edge of the shower...
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| Closing-up and waterproofing the area under the shelf/ledge |
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| The shower's lip/edge attached and waterproofed. |
...So by 8:30pm (not too bad!) we were finally ready for the tiler.
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| The completed shower - ready for the tiler |
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| Montage of the bathroom - the night before the tiler starts |
