A DIY shower remodeling project involves many, MANY hours of labor before a single tile is laid.
Sometimes in DIY projects it’s three steps forward and two steps back. Other times, it’s three steps forward and five steps back. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you can learn how to do lots of remodeling tasks, if you have time and patience.
Our master bathroom remodeling project started in November with a few exploratory holes in the wall. Our shower demolition occurred in mid-December, then we got busy celebrating holidays and visiting family in Kansas. Since New Years, we’ve spent many, many hours working on the shower, and we still haven’t laid any tile.
In planning our project, we decided to do our shower first and complete it before we tackled anything else in the room. Why? So we still had use of the sinks, toilet and tub. Also we knew the shower would be the most difficult part of the remodel.
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The good surprise during demo
Our house came with a 33-by-34-inch builder grade shower. The bathroom is pretty large, but the shower was tiny. We couldn’t make it any wider because of the location tucked between the bathroom wall and the wall for the water closet. But we knew we wanted to make it longer by bumping it out further into the room.
I wanted to add a little corner bench and a niche and some lovely marble and tile. You can see more about my tile choices in this post.
You never know what lurks behind your shower wall, like this large cavity. You can see a glimpse of it behind the back wall at left and the added space on the right. It added about three square more room than we expected the shower to have.
When Shawn, my Fix-It Farmer, took out the drywall above the tile on the walls, he discovered a pleasant little surprise. Right behind the back wall was a totally empty cavity that was almost 14 inches deep.
This is a better view of the old tiny shower pan, the cavity behind it and the new angled entry.
Apparently, the builders of our 1995 spec house had a special on tiny shower pans, so they made the space smaller to fit.
Now our shower is about three square feet bigger and my bench is a rectangle instead of a small triangle. How great is that? I won’t think about the 24 years I used this shower and it should have been bigger all along…
Demo of the shower produced LOTS and LOTS of dust. We put plastic over the door from the master bath to the bedroom. It was a tremendous mess, and Shawn got a nasty respiratory bug right after doing the work. I don’t know if there’s a connection there, but it didn’t help. He wore a mask, gloves and – after getting something in his eye – eye protection.
Shawn spent a few days working on the new shower entry because we wanted to angle the door to get maximum square footage and mirror the door on the water closet right next to it. He attached 4-by-4 posts at the proper angle to adjacent wall studs and ran framing 2-by-4s at the floor and ceiling.
It sounds a lot easier than it is because he had to figure out all the angles and support wedges and attachment bracing. Oodles of geometry involved, which I won’t go into here.
You’ll see this as a running theme. Sounds easy, but in practice by novices, not so much.
Framing for remodeled shower shows a spot for a niche and a bench, both on the back wall.
Next, he added some wall studs in a few strategic places for support and to have something to attach the cement board to. He also put in a light and attached cement board to the ceiling. Because the cement board sheets are heavy, he screwed small blocks of wood into the framing just below the ceiling. He rested the board on the blocks and played a little Jenga with other blocks to get the panel into place before screwing it down.
He also created the new and improved shower bench, using 2-by-4s, 2-by-6s and plywood, in the now larger space along the back wall. And he framed out my beloved shower niche, which will store all the shampoo, conditioner, soap, razor and more. And the bench will allow me to rest my foot on it while I shave my shins instead of wedging myself in between two walls like a pretzel.
The bad surprise during plumbing work
Next came the plumbing. We planned to save money (and our ability to DIY the project) by keeping everything in its current location.
For the shower, the drain stayed where it was, as did the main supply lines for hot and cold water. But we did want to upgrade the fixtures, add a rain shower head (Shawn’s goal) and a handheld shower on a slider bar (my goal).
Our mixed brass and chrome hardware from 1995 seemed more likely to offend.
The second time was the charm for soldering joints to the new PEX plumbing for the shower.
Shawn studied up on soldering techniques to change out the main shower valve, which led to the rest of the plumbing. He made multiple practice runs on copper and brass fittings to prepare for the main event. While keeping the main copper supply lines in place, he planned to replace the rest of the copper plumbing in the shower with PEX. PEX is flexible plastic tubing that is easier to work with and lasts longer than copper.
His first attempt at welding on the new fitting to transition to PEX didn’t work out so well. After the joint appeared to hold at first, it later failed. It failed at 3:30 the next morning.
I woke up as I often do around that time to visit the bathroom and before I even got out of bed, I heard the telltale sound of water spraying. I shook Shawn awake, and he went outside to turn off the water to the whole house while he made a temporary repair.
Fortunately, there’s this connection system called Sharkbite that is super-easy and fast. He cut off the failing joint and capped off the offending pipe with a Sharkbite plug in less than an hour. The water was back on in time for everyone to get ready for school and work.
Yay!!!
Shawn does not give up easily. He studied soldering some more and made some more practice runs in the location where the permanent pipes would go. A few days later, he soldered the joints again, and they are still holding. He even pressure tested the joints to make sure they wouldn’t fail again.
And the ugly truth about DIY remodeling
The next adventure was making the shower pan. That, too, had its own host of challenges.
But I’ll save that for another day.
If you want to do a big remodel yourself, prepare for it to take a lot longer than you’d expect. You have to educate yourself in the various trades of plumbing, framing and tiling. YouTube is great for helping you figure things out. But keep in mind that the best videos are from professionals showing you exactly what to do, and you are not a professional.
Small steps that are so obvious to them that they don’t include them may jump out and bite you as you’re trying to replicate the job. Then you start Googling like crazy to figure out how to fold that corner or level that drain. Expect mistakes and that you will take more time and have to redo a thing or two (or ten).
That’s the ugly truth about DIY projects. You WILL feel stupid at times. You WILL make mistakes. There may be times when you fuss at your spouse during tense moments. But my hope is that if we continue to persevere, we will have a lovely master bathroom at a bargain price.