gutting the shower

airic · 12-28-2008, 08:55 PM

I am about to close on my first house and am excited to start gutting everything and making it mine. I wanted to put a new shower in with block glass for the outter wall tiles for the inner walls and I'm not sure about the floor. I have done some research and see I can get a shower pan/base OR I can get some mixture make a frame pour the mixture let it cure put a plastic coating over that pour the mixture again then start the tiling process. The origional shower is one of those everyday shower tub situations and obviously the drain is right against a wall. I havent done much if any pluming work. Do i need to somehow connect piping to center the drain or what. Should I go with the mixture and just slope the tiles sort of like swimming pool slopes to the deep end toward the drain? Sorry if this is a bit confusing I would love any help I can get trying to make this the dream home here

**thekctermite** · 12-28-2008, 09:57 PM

If you're doing glass block walls I'd suggest looking into a pre-made shower pan since the membrane system of a tile pan is typically brought several inches up the wall.

Take a good hard look at the Kerdi system made by Schluter systems. That's the most bulletproof shower product on the market, and it is also the easiest. Youtube has some good videos of that process.

Doing the shower pan with a conventional membrane system is a very involved process that includes a "mud" pre-pan with a slope toward the drain, then a membrane, then a final "mud" pan over that. The mud is very very very dry mixed portland and sand (the mix is the consistency of moist sand) packed in place, not poured like concrete.

airic · 01-07-2009, 09:10 AM

So I decided to just go with tiling the outter wall instead of going with glass blocks it was much easier to just frame out the wall rather than buying all that glass. I ended up going with a " mud pan " rather than a pre made pan so that I didnt have to relocate the drain thus far I havent seen any water in my kitchen so Im assuming I did it correctly.