Plumbing Archives - 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

As we approach four years of home ownership, the eyesore in the basement becomes the focus of the first summer project of 2017. The tub with jets has been nice, but the basement is where our guest rooms are located and people don’t take baths when they visit. We did this project on a limited budget (less than $2K) and aimed to reuse as much as possible.

What we kept:
-Vanity Cabinet & Corner Storage Cabinet (Painted White)
-Toilet
-Mirror (Framed in “Weathered Wood”)
-Ceiling & Most of the Walls
-Window (with glass we frosted)

What we replaced:
-The tub with a shower insert
-Tile Floor
-Vanity Top With Granite
-Light Fixture
-New Paint
-New Hardware on Cabinets

One final look at the 1980s. Goodbye pink vanity and pink tile! So long blue tub!

Demolition is always a fun process. But this is where that term “sweat equity” comes into play. Pulling out the tub and chipping away the tile were the two biggest hurdles.

In our previous bathroom renovation, I started removing the floor tiles by chipping them up with a hand chisel and hammer. That proved to be a grueling process, and in the previous bathroom, I was lucky that I could simply lift up a layer of floor-board. This time around, I was not as lucky, because under the tiles was the foundation. I wanted to save my back and hours of sweat and rented a hammer drill from Home Depot. For about $50, I was able to quickly tear through the tiles.

Once the walls were down to studs, I started looking at the location of the drain, comparing it to where the drain hole is located on the fiberglass shower unit we purchased. In the photos below, you will see the process of moving the drain pipe location a couple of inches further away from the wall. It involved breaking up the foundation, pulling out the old pipe, redirecting a new piece of PVC and pouring new concrete.

The next step: Framing and plumbing. For the framing, I needed to add 2×4 studs to support the shower insert. For the plumbing, I needed to solder pieces of copper pipe together for the shower valve.

I watched a number of tutorials online about how people install fiberglass showers and many professionals seemed to prefer using a mortar bed beneath the shower pan. They do this to make the shower seem more firm under the feet of whoever is standing in it. In one of the photos above, you see a bunch of mortar slapped on a black garbage bag. I simply mixed up a 40 lb bag of mortar and put it down before putting the shower pan in place.

The photos below show the drywall installation. I started by marking the location of the studs with masking tape to remind me where to put screws into the wall once the studs were no longer visible. You will also see how the left edge of the shower insert involved a bit of creativity. There wasn’t enough room to add dry-wall, but I needed something to make the corner solid, so used a piece of wood.

The next photo shows our selections for tile, paint and granite. The paint is: Behr Campfire Ash, which we purchased in a satin finish. The granite was a custom order, as we had a difficult time finding options for vanity tops with a “left-set” sink. The floor tiles are porcelain, the same brand that we used in our previous bathroom renovation. We liked the “wood grain” appearance, but wanting the guest bathroom to have its own identity, went with a slightly different color. The tiles are Marazzi Montagna Rustic Bay. The grout is Fusion Pro Haystack.

Here’s a video of how I cut the floor tiles, using an angle grinder fitted with a diamond-tipped continuous blade.

Around this time, I also painted the cabinets and hinges. For the wood, I used bonding primer followed by Behr Premium Plus Ultra Pure White Semi Gloss. For the hinges, I used Rust-Oleum Metallic spray paint.

Finally, the finishing touch that brings the whole room together: the mirror frame. The edges of the old mirror were starting to rust, but we wanted to reuse it to save money. Making a frame cost only about $8 in wood and about as much in stain. I bought a couple of 1×3 pine boards and used a wire brush on a drill to rough up the surface.

The wire brush was just the first step in giving the frame a “weathered” appearance. I also used a hammer, nails and a screwdriver to add more distress. Then used a router to notch the wood where the mirror would sit. The color comes from mixing three layers of stain, starting with a light, then dark, with a top coat of gray stain, followed by polyurethane.