Hello,
Attached is a picture of a converted just-plumbed water closet in the basement of our humble home. As you can see, the back walls are of two types - first the lowermost block foundation, and then the slab wall foundation.
I plan to build a cement shower pan - and hopefully, tile directly to the concrete walls after doing the appropriate sealing job. I've done a lot of research, and know I need to do a pre-sloped floor, cut the existing drain assembly to the height of the floor, install the drain assembly kit (Sioux Chief 821-2APK from Home Depot), add a liner, attach it to the drain kit, and build some more floor. I plan to lay 2x4's across the floor to act as a shower threshold.
However, I'm at a loss as to what to do about applying the liner to the concrete wall. I don't want to do wall studs and reduce the size of the already miniscule shower area.
Some ideas I've had:
1. Apply membrane to first slope, have it run 6" up the side and secure it with sheathing board that is held in place by the left wall and the threshold, and a corner block for the concrete corner, cover it with wire, and mortar that. The result would be stepped - the first at 6", the second at the change in wall. How would that work for tile?
2. Same idea as above, but have the sheathing run as high as the change from block to slab, fill in the space behind with mortar - also level out the elevation on the right side (see picture).
3. Go ahead and do some studs on the slab portion of the wall, secure on wallboard and glue the bottoms to the wall but not actually secure the bottoms to any framing. I'd like to avoid this solution because then the rest of the concrete wall which I'd like to tile floor to ceiling would not be flush with the shower wall.
Maybe the only option is the obvious one, and I haven't thought of it yet?
Thanks!
Matt Staben
Spokane Valley, WA