Shower Base

With my contributions to the HVAC work out of the way, I finally got back to one of the smaller projects I need to wrap up. Rather than low voltage wire or sound insulation, I realized the higher priority was getting the shower base installed. I bought a pre-made linear drain shower kit, including the base and the two edges. A linear drain is where the shower drain is a long rectangle instead of a circle or square. I like how it looks and how much simpler it makes tiling.

Normally, the plumbers are supposed to install the shower drain plumbing beforehand, including the trap, and terminate the drain pipe just below the subfloor. Instead, my plumber asked me to install the shower base first, and then they’d know the drain was exactly in the right spot (even though we’d discussed exactly where it would go). Whatever; I’m past arguing about this stuff and I just want it done.

I cut down the base just slightly so that the shower will fit to the right of the window. I picked up a bag of modified thinset, but the supposedly included 3/4″ u-notch trowel was no where to be found, so I had to order that since no one carried it locally. With that finally to hand, I mixed up some of the thinset and dumped it onto the floor, realized there was a bunch of unmixed powder, put it back, added water, re-mixed, and spread it out. Of course there wasn’t enough, because I didn’t want to make too much, so I had to quickly mix up another batch before the first layer set up, got it all troweled into corn rows, and carefully set the base on top of it.

The next step was carefully walking around on the base to smoosh it down and then checking it for level. I scraped the thinset away from where the drain hole will go and used that glob to fill in under one of the corners where I was worried it was too flexible. With the base down, I texted the plumbers, letting them know that the shower base was installed, and also I found a small leak in one of the supply pipes (to the same shower), plus I realized they never installed the water line to the refrigerator. All of this needs to be done before drywall.

The plumbers came back and drilled the hole in the floor, then decided they wanted the drain pan installed as well. They glued a PVC fitting to the ABS of the pan (using glue I had thoughtfully purchased beforehand) to simplify the process, fixed the leak, and started running the line for the refrigerator. They also came into my bedroom while I was in the middle of a meeting for work to turn off the water main, then came back a bit later to turn it back on. Now I’m just bitching, sorry.

After re-watching the instructional video for maybe the third time, I busted out the tube of sealant included in the kit to attach the pan to the base and carefully squeezed out the bead along the inner flange, set the pan into the base, and then applied a second bead to the surface, which I spread out with a putty knife. The process went surprisingly smoothly and similar to the video, except for the part where squeezing my caulk gun is way harder than it should be for some reason. Maybe I need to poke more holes in the end of the tube or something. I texted the plumber again to let them know it’s done again, and hopefully they can finish up the rest of their work now.

There’s about eighteen more steps in the shower install and waterproofing process and I’m losing hope that any of it will be done by a contractor. The HVAC crew hasn’t been back this week; I think they’re waiting on a check from the bank. My back porch is suddenly twice as expensive as it was quoted six months ago, so we’re looking for another contractor for that. That’s inconvenient, since I told the HVAC guy they could probably wait to hang the condenser on the back of the house until the porch was up, since I was hoping that would be soon.

I also managed to run the thermostat wires. That was a really small project, but it had been hanging on my list for a while, so it was good to finally knock it out. There’s still some security system wiring to do and a whole bunch of sound proofing insulation yet, but we’re chipping away at it, as always.