Master bath remodel

I bought our home in 2009 and since day #1 I have thought to myself “who's idea was it to carpet the master bathroom?”  The house has this excellent master suite-style bathroom with dual sinks, a walk-in closet and separate toilet room, but then the builders installed a generic looking shower-over-tub and carpeted right to the vanity.  This had to go.

The contractor started gutting the bathroom on a Monday morning, beginning by stripping out the old bath tub and shower enclosure and taking the walls down to bare studs.  The shower valve was changed and the plumbing was all moved a few inches to the right to center the shower handle and shower head to the new center of the room.  The shower area will be larger than the tub it replaces.

Tuesday morning.  The floor drain had to be moved from to the center of the shower floor, which required jack-hammering the concrete slab and extending the drain line to the center of the space.  This job was one of the big reasons I didn’t do the shower remodel myself.   And I wanted this project to be done before 2020. 

Blocking was added 12” up the walls and a 4.5” high curb was added.  We brought the curb out to a 45 degree corner of the wall and added about 5” to the width of the shower area.  On Wednesday the hot mopper added slope to the floor and mopped the smelliest asphault-like material onto the floor and 12” up the walls.  The house would smell like a new highway for days to come.

Thursday the tile guy put hardiebacker on the walls to hold the mortar and tiles and began tiling the walls.  Friday he did the shower floor and bathroom floor.  Saturday he grouted and finished the tile job.  No more carpet in the bathroom!

After the grout was dry, I followed my tile guy’s recommendation and sealed the grout with a product called 511 Impregnator.  While I was at it, I cleaned the grout in the laundry room and spare bathroom and sealed the grout there as well.

The following weekend we went camping with Rose and Stuart at the newest National Park in the system, Pinnacles National Park.  It was formerly a National Monument, but now it’s a National Park--the rock Pinnacles the place is named after seem not to notice the name change.  The camp sites were nice and we did a lot of hiking around the various pinnacle-strewn rock faces. It was a nice break from the construction zone going on at home.

Now we’re at two weeks since the tile guy finished his job and our new shower door has arrived.  I helped Stuart install his a couple of weeks back, now it’s time for mine.  I loved the quality of the hardware on Stuart’s door and loved the modern trimless appearance, so I placed the same order.  These doors have very little adjustment for out-of-square and I haven’t seen a house yet that is square anywhere.  We had our challenges but it’s installed and looking good.  

Overall, we are very pleased with the results.  It will be nice to not have to step into a tub to take a shower, there is vastly more room inside and the shower doors really help modernize the bathroom.   Next steps are to replace the rupture-prone corrugated water supply lines with new quarter-turn ball valves and stainless steel supply lines, new floor moulding and possibly moulding around the bathroom windows.  We will attempt to stain the vanity, add new hardware, new faucets and possibly replace the single large mirror with smaller dual mirrors, and we’re not sure if we will replace the countertop and sinks; we will wait and see how it all looks together after staining the vanity.