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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Using a string line to framed-out the ledge & keep the studs aligned |
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| 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.
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| Morning of Feb 14th - first piece of plywood |
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| Second piece had lots of intricate cuts |
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| Installing the second piece behind the toilet |
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| 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…
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| Feb 15th - Adding plywood along the other wall and around our temporary door |
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| Montage of the bathroom fully enclosed with plywood...except for our temporary door! |
