Verlo House to Home

Welcome to our basement bathroom (currently a construction zone). We’re really proud of the progress so far as we make some much-needed improvements. Before all of this work, the bathroom had been the pinnacle of 1990s design, with its popcorn ceiling, ceramic sink and builder’s grade ammenities. It also had several bizarre features including deep but narrow shelves, and an unnecessarily small shower with a door that couldn’t fully swing open because there was a toilet in its path.

Like all home improvement projects, I have to wait to grab the hammer until I’ve answered two basic questions:
1. Do we have the money?
2. Do we have the time and energy?
In this case, we didn’t necessarily have the money but with winter on the horizon I did have plenty of time and energy to spend working on something indoors. One December afternoon, I made the decision to get to work.

After the satisfying experience of taking a sledge to ceramic, and the more strenuous chore of removing the shower, my next task was to physically move the location of the shower drain pipe. I did this because we wanted the new shower to take up the entire end of the room with the drain centrally located. We believe this was how the house was originally planned, because the foundation had a curious square spot that had been repaired exactly where we wanted the drain.

To move the drain, I used my brother-in-law’s hammer drill to break up the concrete. Then, I cut out the existing PVC pipe and replaced it with new piping. In the slideshow below, you will see a pink string I hung from the ceiling, which I used to make sure the pipe was perfectly centered as I applied PVC cement.

Tearing up all of that concrete made a huge mess and kicked up a lot of dust. This happened because I used my circular saw and a mason sawblade to cut several lines before hammering at them. At some point, my ShopVac stopped working. I found the on/off switch had become clogged with dust particles. The company itself was not helpful in finding a solution. Thankfully, I found a replacement switch online and was able to put it back together and get it working again.

After moving the drain pipe, I figured I should probably replace the busted foundation. I used 4, 60-lb bags of Quikrete to create the new slab of concrete. I intentionally lowered this layer of concrete an inch and a half below the previous foundation, leaving room for me to eventually create a sloped shower pan with zero-barrier entry. After the concrete cured, I put down a layer of insulation and installed the heated floor cabling. I installed a mat system from Warming Systems.

The heated floor now installed, with cabling going up conduit to a thermostat, I poured a layer of self-leveling underlayment. The underlayment does several things: it holds the heating cables in place, it radiates the heat produced by them, and it also creates a flat surface for tiles. I used a few temporary pieces of wood to keep the underlayment from spilling out of the room and into the shower pan.

For the sloped shower pan, I mixed up about 75 lbs of bedding mortar and slowly packed it down to the floor of the shower. I used a level to scrape the floor from the sides to the drain, creating a slope for the water to follow. The drain is from FloFX.

Around this time, I also started putting up paneling in the shower. I had planned to install concrete backerboard, until I was walking in a hardware store one day and came across a lighter-weight option. I had never heard of GoBoard, but looked into it and decided it was worth the extra price. It was very easy to cut and install. Next, I turned my attention to the ceiling fan, which I replaced with a newer unit of similar dimensions:

With much of the electrical work complete, I replaced the drywall I had removed to access the wires.

Taking a pause from masonry, electrical, HVAC and drywall, I got to work on the plumbing for the new shower. We knew we wanted this bathroom to have a “luxury” feel to it, so went with a faucet from Delta that has both a shower head and a handheld sprayer. I used my new workbench in the garage to solder pipes together before putting everything in place.

Happy with the plumbing, I finished installing the GoBoard, applied the recommended Johns Manville sealant to joints, put a waterproof membrane on the floor, then coated everything with RedGard waterproofing. Here’s a video of the first time I tested the shower:

That was a lot of work and there’s still plenty to do! Up next, choosing tiles. I’ll share more progress soon.
Thanks for reading!
-Mike

Quite often, our projects begin with the thought of making one small single improvement. In this case, we wanted to paint the basement, replacing the green walls with a neutral gray. However, like most of the projects we’ve shared on this blog, this one also snowballed into a ton of work. The payoff, however, made the time and effort all worth it!

The biggest complication with simply painting the walls centered around the fact that I had cut large holes in the ceiling when installing the pool table lamp. After installing the over-table lights, I figured, “well, I’ve already torn into the ceiling, might as well also replace the dated ‘boob’ lights and put in can lights.” Again, snowball forming.

When attempting to patch those ceiling holes, I admit I lacked the experience to match the existing popcorn texture.

And thus the project stalled, creating a financial conundrum. I stared at the ceiling for months, reminding myself of two key outcomes when proceeding:

1. If I hired an expert, it would cost more money than I think I wanted to spend.

2. If I stripped the popcorn texture myself, it would be a hell of a mess and a bunch of work AND I’d risk ruining the carpet that was relatively new.

Ultimately, money won. I decided to make a mess and get to work. Fortunately, I did make a good purchase and bought a ceiling scraper to help reduce the aformentioned popcorn scraping mess:

The tool lets you attach a bag for the popcorn to fall into while you scrape the ceiling. It’s really easy to use, especially when you spray the popcorn with a little water before you start. I used our multi-purpose pump sprayer that we have had for years, here’s a link, for the water application.

I was also careful about the dust that was unavoidable, always wearing a mask, gloves and eye protection. I also worked in stages, moving and draping all the furniture to one side of the room, to reduce the after-cleaning process.

These photos show one side of the room stripped of popcorn texture, with the other side still untouched. I used 2 coats of primer and 3 coats of white ceiling paint. The difference in the two sides of the room was dramatic:

After finishing the ceiling, I primed and painted the dark green walls. We used the Behr color “Mineral” in an eggshell finish. We used Mineral in several rooms in our Apple Valley home and liked it a lot as a neutral “greige.” The room immediately looked bigger when covering the dark green paint.

Rather than priming and painting the existing trim, we decided to go a little more contemporary with slightly larger trim. For the baseboards, I used primed 1x4s. For the door & window trim, I used a mix of 3/4×3.5 casings and 9/16×2.25 casings. Everything was painted in Behr Semi-Gloss Ultra Pure White Latex.