Thoughts

Master Bath Remodel

After taking a break from house projects (floors, baseboards, chandelier, painting), I took on the master bath remodel. The bathroom shower had, what many years ago our house inspector referred to as, "the worst tile job I have ever seen in my career." To support the shower glass, there was 10-inch square, 12-foot tall post between the shower and tub. Besides for being an ugly and impractical bathroom, the previous home owner had put in cracked tiles (?!?) and attempted to use grout to fill in a 3-inch by 6-inch section (instead of using a piece of tile) so shower walls and pan leaked like a sieve. In April '22 I had had enough - I took some pictures and started the demo!

There were several things about the bath that were odd, and as demo proceeded, I found out that there was several feet of empty and unused space behind the linen closet. The walk-in closet and toilet room also had an odd ledge above them that needed to be closed in.

I also discovered that the linen closet was framed with six (yes 6!) 2x4s on one shower corner, three on the other corners, and had about a dozen 2x4s in the top! It weighed hundreds of pounds and I finally had to use a sawzall to cut it out because it was nail-stitched every 3" on every side.

With all that out of the way, my wife and I sketched out the new design.

By May '22, I had the demo done and plumbing in to create the shower pan.

To help speed the project on, and because I don't love doing drywall, we hired a friend to come put up the drywall and box-in and put doors an area over the walk-in closet for a spot to store our carry-on luggage.

We had some camping trips with the kids so I waited until July to make more progress. This is where we finally have the red guard on the shower, primer on the walls, and paint in the areas we weren't going to tile.

More summer camping, hiking, and fishing later...

.. and the shower pan tile finally was laid!

Then the wall herringbone was given a start. I laid out the pattern probably 6 times on the floor trying to avoid awkward cuts around the shower boxes, window, floor, angled ceiling line, along with left and right walls. I also tried to make the high-spots on the wall less pronounced by tapering thin-set out.

Sometime in the fall, I got annoyed enough with the small pieces around the inset shower boxes that I switched to the floor. Alicia, my father-in-law and friends (Nate, Jason) helped put in the underlayment, heating wire, lay the tile, and grout.

Back to the wall, progress was slow through the fall and it took all the way until the end of December to finish the tile, grout, glass, and make the shower functional.