Under the Shower: Waterproofing (part 4)

With the bathroom wall construction completed, I now have to make major progress on the shower - with the tiler coming on Monday there's a lot of work to do in just four days...

The next step is to finish waterproofing the area under shower, and permanently affix the raised shower floor. As mentioned in previous posts, I've gone a bit crazy with the waterproofing and have several redundant layers to minimize the chances of a leak. As part of this strategy there are actually two "floors" to the shower - the actual raised shower floor (because it is sitting on top of a steel beam), and then the sub-floor, which is level with the rest of the bathroom. Each "floor" - including the entirety of the bathroom floor - is to be fully waterproofed to increase the redundancy, (hopefully!) minimizing the chances that if there is ever a leak, it will not penetrate through to the flat below ours.

I started by waterproofing around the shower drain opening in the sub-floor - a large hole that was cut into the plywood while leveling the bathroom floor and installing plywood around the drain.

Feb 16th - applying the waterproof membrane around the drain

After the membrane was dry, the following day I fitted the Marmox insulated tile backer board, made sure everything fit together properly and prepared a bucket of flexible tile adhesive. As with the shower walls, the combination of the rubberized membrane, waterproof tile adhesive and waterproof tile backer board creates the redundant waterproof assembly.

Feb 17th - fitting the Marmox board in place

Testing to make sure everything fits!

Ready to go - mixed tile adhesive, cleaned sub-floor.

As mentioned in our roof posts, I have a serious aversion to mortar and troweled adhesives...mainly because I'm not that good at working with them and generally make a mess. This time I made a huge effort to learn from those initial experiences, mix smaller batches, and work quickly - yet carefully. Fortunately it went better than I expected, with minimal mess! The sub-floor was coated with the adhesive in sections, and the Marmox boards were placed over them.

Adhesive partially applied

First Marmox board down

Next few pieces on the left - the last section of adhesive on the right

In between the board edges, silicone is applied, and then taped over with a special (and expensive) waterproof tape that completes the waterproofing system at the joints.

Completed Marmox board with silicone along the joints

Extra waterproof tape around the drain opening

After all joints are siliconed and taped, I added several intermediate supports for the raised shower floor, making sure everything was level and cutting openings for the boiler's white condensate line. I then did a few final reviews of the waterproofing to verify there were no gaps or neglected areas, and screwed the waterproof plywood in place.

Feb 18th - Additional wood supports for the plywood base

Final shot before closing-up: fully taped and waterproofed

The plywood based permanently fastened

Permanently attaching the plywood made me somewhat nervous, as from this point onwards, I'll never again be able to access the drain and sub-floor in case there's a leak. I guess this is where having the redundant layers of waterproofing come into play, and provide some peace of mind. Not to mention a bit of confidence from the success of our new roof, and the fact that it has not (so far!) leaked...

Building the Bathroom: Enclosing the Walls

I’m finally back! It’s been almost 2.5 months – the longest I’ve been away from London and the flat for quite some time. I’m gearing up for a busy couple of weeks, because we’re on a tight schedule – “Aglaya” booked a tiler to start work in the bathroom on February 20th, so I have exactly 7 days to finish all of the build-out, waterproofing and prep work before he can start. We had originally thought about just tiling the shower for now, but we soon realized that 4/5 of the work (and the cost) would be the shower. At that point we realized that it made sense to give it just a little more time and money and simply get the whole room done as part of our Big Push. It’s going to be tight – there’s a lot work to be done, but I think 5 days should be enough…

In December, I had completed most of the shower’s build-out and installed most of the Marmox tile backer board on the walls. What remained was completing the shower’s base, and building out the ledge and walls of the bathroom (outside the shower), which will be soon covered in limestone tiles. The only work done on these surrounding walls (so far) was the basic stud framing, so they would have to be covered in plywood, waterproofing and Marmox backer board. For the ledge, it would have to be framed out, and then covered in the plywood, waterproofing, etc.

February 13 - the exposed wall studs

The most exciting part of this will be closing up our temporary door, removing the blue tarp and building out the real door we will eventually be using every day. The real door will be on the opposite side of the room from where the current, temporary one is. In the final layout, the bathroom will be en-suite, accessed from the bedroom.

Before starting - looking the other way towards the temporary door (shower on the left)

I started by laying out the ledge – the idea here is that it wraps almost completely around the bathroom and into the shower, so we can put thing on it while providing a place to transition from stone to mirror. I framed out the ledge using short studs fastened to the full-height wall studs. This ledge also had to hide the cistern of our new toilet, so had to take it into consideration with the dimensions and layout.

Using a string line to framed-out the ledge & keep the studs aligned

End of the day - ready for plywood in the morning

Once the studs were in, I used a string line to find the level and started attaching sheets of waterproof/boil-proof plywood (WPBP) that would act as the substrate for the waterproofing and tile backer boards. The plywood also helps tie everything together structurally, while minimizing any movement that might cause the tile or grout to crack in the future. In doing this, the larger the piece of plywood, the better job it does tying everything together, so this required some rather intricate cutting.

Morning of Feb 14th - first piece of plywood

Second piece had lots of intricate cuts

Installing the second piece behind the toilet

Lower part of the wall/ledge completed

Once the long wall (where the toilet is located) was finished, I moved on to the shorter wall (where the sink will eventually go). This is where our temporary door is located, so for the time being I’ll finish everything but a narrow opening. If we weren’t living on site while doing the work, I wouldn’t have to worry about this (and just close up the temporary door now), but I’d prefer to minimize having to going in and out through “The Box” – particularly once the tiler starts his work which can be quite messy. So in the meantime, we have this workaround…

Feb 15th - Adding plywood along the other wall and around our temporary door

Montage of the bathroom fully enclosed with plywood...except for our temporary door!

Bathroom tiling: setting the stage

One practical decision that has resulted from the "Big Push" is that we're going to hire a tiler to tile the bathroom.

Andre had originally said he was keen to do the tiling himself - partly to save us money on the labour, but partly so he could learn a new skill. I understand - and appreciate! - his desire to do it, but I really feel that we need push things along and at least get the bathroom finished sooner rather than later. Fortunately, our finances are a lot better now than they were last year (in large part because we're no longer making scaffolding payments!). Since hiring someone is now actually a possibility, I insisted that we do it: not only will this be more efficient to bring someone in, but then Andre can focus on something else (probably building the staircase up to the loft) while the tiler does the bathroom.

So, while Andre is in New York focusing on running his architectural office, I've been leading the charge in terms of getting things organised for the tiling - and experiencing just how time-consuming that can be. I asked several tilers for quotes, but the better ones came to the flat to see firsthand at what was needed. I spent hours going over the job with them, since it's most definitely not a normal, straightforward tiling job and we're using large natural stone tiles which require more time and skill to install. Below are some colour-coded drawings that Andre put together to clarify the scope of work to the tilers, and what was going where. The blue represents limestone, and the red represents slate.

The idea is that the shower is tiled in slate, except for the floor and a ledge that wraps around the edge of the bathroom. The floor and that legde are limestone - the ledge leads to and then wraps around the shower, becoming a shelf and niche that convieniently hides the steel post that helps to support the loft. In an ideal world, of course, we would not have a steel post in the bathroom! But during demolition, we discovered an unexpected arch in the wall, at which point our structural engineers insisted on this additional steel post for extra support. But by that time, it was too late to make substantial changes to the design, so Andre basically worked around it, integrating the post into the design itself.

All of this led to a rather complicated design, with lots of corners and edges - so in the end I decided to hire the tiler who had spent the most time with me reviewing the job and the design, and asking the relevant questions. This tiler, Sean, seemed knowledgable, offered lots of advice, and also seemed like he would be someone who Andre could get on well with, and work with. There's still a lot of work to do before we're ready for tiling - among other things, we have to finish building out the shower and finish waterproofing the shower and the rest of the bathroom. So there will have to be a certain amount of co-ordination between Andre and the tiler. Good thing Andre is back at the end of this week, so we can get started!

Patience...

One of the themes of this project has been that the best-laid plans don't always work out - and right now I'm feeling that acutely, but on a smaller scale.

I was really excited after we took the decision to focus more aggressively on finishing the construction. We immediately made a short-term plan: I would return to London on January 9th, and Andre would follow within a couple of weeks, so that by late January or early February we could get another big chunk of work done. Psychologically as well as practically, I'm really ready to see some more progress, since the last major milestone we hit was more than three months ago, when we got the heat working. Andre was here for two weeks in December, and he did a lot of work as usual, but it was mostly design, planning and prep work - obviously very necessary, but it didn't yield too many satisfyingly tangible results!

In terms of next steps, what we're working on now is getting the bathroom finished and tiled. We'll post about the build-out Andre did in December in a couple of days...

...But in the meantime, here we are in early February, and I'm still here on my own, and we haven't yet started our "Big Push". Happily, it's for a great reason: Andre's business has really picked up, and he's been manically busy in New York and unable to come here. Obvioulsy that's a very good thing, but here in London... well, they say that patience is a virtue.

The Big Push

Happy New Year, readers!!

You may have noticed there's been no activity on this blog for the past few weeks. That's because since mid-December both Andre and I have been in New York, enjoying (like many others) the festive season, and (maybe just us?!) going home every night to a comfortable and furnished apartment rather than a construction site!

Of course, that doesn't mean that our London project is not on our minds. In fact, in the course of our many discussions about how 2012, we've openly acknowledged that the state of affairs is getting a little tiring. So we've decided that 2012 is going to be the year of the Big Push.

Last year there was really only so much we could do in terms of the construction. As 2011 began, we were still just trying to make the place habitable, notably by putting a roof on it. Financial constraints limited how much we could do, and how quickly we could do it, and partly dictated the decision to do the bulk of the building ourselves. Last year the whole project was still so overwhelming that looking at the big picture was absolutely impossible.

But now that most of the heavy construction is finished, we can just about start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. So we've decided that we need to more aggressive in terms of our time frame this year, and really focus our attention and resources on getting this done! To that end, we took one of our biggest decisions yet: we've even decided to postpone our wedding, tentatively scheduled for this summer, so that we put all our energy (well ,outside of our jobs, obviously) into finishing this flat...

The Shower: Waterproofing (part 3)

After an interlude with tiles,  insulation and pigeons, I'm finally getting back to waterproofing our new shower. With the Marmox backer board installed at the brick wall, it's time to start waterproofing the plywood walls so we can put the Marmox boards on them as well.

As previously mentioned, we're using the BAL tanking system on the plywood. It's straightforward work, but rather time-consuming...

Dec 9th - starting to waterproof the plywood substrate

The plywood fully painted with the waterproof membrane

A detail showing where the shower valve sticks out

The polyester tape applied at the plywood joints

All the plywood walls are now waterproofed!

Now that the main plywood walls are waterproofed, I have to deal with encasing and waterproofing the steel post. The problem here is - how to fasten plywood to it? If I had some of  my steel-fabrication tools here (I used to build steel furniture in NYC), it would have been easier. But since I don't have that stuff (and since it wasn't worth buying a load of kit when we would only use it once), I had to get creative. I ended up using some of the large 150mm screws (6") that were left over from the structural roof work to make a sort of plywood sandwich! This meant the plywood was fastened to both sides of the post using these long screws (going through the post) to hold them together.

Dec 10th - drilling holes for the large screws

Setting the first piece of plywood (on the far side)

Adding the second piece

Now we have our plywood & steel "sandwich"

With the post sandwiched in between plywood, it was then possible to finish framing out the rest of the corner, including the shelf...

Dec 11th - the shelf is built out

With the plywood work finished (and the waterproofing membrane dry) it was finally time to attach the Marmox backer board. Similar to the brick installation, one uses large washers, but here, we use stainless steel screws rather than the plastic "spankers". As before, the joints between boards are sealed with silicone and then taped over with a waterproof tape.

Starting the Marmox board installation on the plywood

The silicone sealant applied to the joints

The waterproof tape goes over the silicone joints

The stopping point - before catching my flight back to NYC...

Floor Insulation & Pigeon Patch

After we realized that there was no way we were going to finish the bathroom construction before my return to New York (because of the time needed to order and deliver the stone tiles), I decided to take a day to deal with a few small tasks that were becoming more and more pressing...particularly as the weather was getting colder and colder.

Back when we leveled the floors at the beginning of the year, we did not install insulation. But now I feel strongly that we need to start making the flat more comfortable - not just bare-minimum livable - so with the temperature dropping and some drafts becoming apparent, it should be done soon. Plus - with the radiator plumbing completed in the bedroom we no longer need access to the floor, so it's good time to do it. After some research, I ordered several very large bags of insulation...

The insulation being delivered

The bags of insulation are quite large!

In addition to the insulation, we also needed to patch a hole in the rear exterior brick wall. This hole was the result of removing the old waste pipe from the original bathroom - it was removed during the plumbing's first fixing - right before the scaffolding was taken down at the end of July.

The "hole"

Not only did the hole let cold air into the cavity of the floor (a big source of drafts in between the joists), but we learned very quickly that a pair of pigeons had moved in! The pigeons did not bother us at all (they were under the floor and off to the side)...in fact "Aglaya" thought it was quite sweet to wake up every morning to the sound of their cooing (and they were LOUD!) But they really bothered a few of our neighbors. Because this would be a messy job (with the bricks & mortar), I figured it would make sense to patch the hole on the same day the floor was insulated.

After removing part of the closet and cutting away the floor boards

The view from the hole (you can see one of the floor joists on the left)

Patching the hole involved making mortar and fitting pieces of brick which meant cutting them individually. What made this difficult was having to work from the inside as there was a 3 story drop below. I should point out that this could not have been done when the scaffolding was up as it did not reach this far over...

The patched hole - sloppy but done

Once the patch was completed, I moved onto the insulation. This was a relatively easy task, but (as usual) it took a bit more time than expected. Having recently been involved in a sound proofing project in New York, I wanted to be sure our floor also provided a decent amount of sound dampening between us and our neighbor below. A key element in sound dampening is to have insulation, but it's better if there's an air gap, so I decided to raise the insulation a few inches above the plaster ceiling using chicken wire to prevent it from slipping. The chicken wire was what took a little time, but within a few hours I had it completed...

Removing the plywood sub-floor to expose the cavity between the joists

Installing the chicken wire between each joist (prevents the insulation from slipping)

Half the insulation installed

The completed insulation

That night we noticed that "the Box" was significantly warmer and the drafts had been minimized...mission accomplished!

Sourcing Tiles

The bathroom construction has gotten far enough along that it's time to pick out and order tiles! This is a huge step for us, psychologically - if we're starting to select finishes, then it means we're finally beginning to see the light at the end of this long, dark tunnel of construction.

We have actually managed to accumulate almost four dozen stone samples! But (as with everything else related to this project!) it was a bit of a journey to get to this point...

The piles of stone tile samples

We had initially looked at tile over a year and a half ago, back when we were optimistic that construction would be relatively quick and painless, and before things got complicated. At that time, we had visited several tile shops in and around London, collected around a dozen samples and had picked out a few options we liked: dark(ish) porcelain tiles from Spain. But as the bathroom construction progressed, and after actually living in the flat for many months, I started having doubts about those porcelain tiles: they now felt too dark, and too "perfect". Considering how much character the ceiling now has and our intention to re-use the old wood floor planks, I had a gut feeling that we should go with a natural stone that was lighter in color.

Two types of slate from a supply shop in Vauxhall: a honed wine colored (left) and a riven-cut "oyster" ( right)

A type of limestone they called "Barcelona", but that was not readily available.

That meant starting the search for tiles from scratch. At least (having spent time doing it a year and a half ago), I already knew of a few good places - but I had forgotten how far away and how spread out across the city these shops were. As a result, I ended spending close to a week running around London collecting samples and determining availability.

Just outside the shop in Vauxhall - you can see the "Shard" under construction. Designed by Renzo Piano, soon to be the tallest building in Europe when completed

The showroom of a shop that specializes in stone tile - located on the edge of Southwark & Southfields

A showroom wall with different types of stone

A marble installation

Eventually we started to realize that "Aglaya" really wanted a colorful and varied stone, while I was gravitating towards a cleaner, simpler limestone. I had envisioned the bathroom as having two different stones: one for the shower area and another for the rest of bathroom. Because I was extremely taken by a warm toned limestone (with a hint of blue) called Batieg Azul (which came from Portugal and Spain) we started focusing our efforts on finding a second stone that would be more colorful but would also complement this limestone.

The Bateig Azul installed in a showroom mock-up

A detail of the Bateig Azul limestone

We soon decided that slate should be our second stone. I knew that there were hundreds of types of slate - in my New York office, we have several drawers full of slate samples from a specialty supplier there, but for some reason I could only find a few options in London. Eventually I found a specialty supplier of slate in Finchley (north London) with several dozen options, including a copper colored slate that "Aglaya" absolutely loved.

Once we returned to the flat, we were pleasantly surprised to see that the copper slate really worked well against the limestone. We slept on it for a few days, tried other options, but the combination of copper slate and Bateig Azul remained our favorite.

The honed Copper Slate on top of the Bateig Azul

We decided not order the stone before I return to New York, but "Aglaya" can place the order a week before I return to London again...