Bathroom Update

Manged to get a decent bit of work accomplished since the last entry so I thought I'd take a break and post an update. Here goes. . .

Once I determined that there were no leaks in the plumbing I finished putting up the remaining portion of the HardieBacker, taped and floated all of the walls, and caulked all of the necessay areas with silicone. Next came the part I was dreading. . . putting in the final layer of deck mud. I was not able to use strings as slope guides this time so I imagined that it was going to be much more difficult that it actually was. I did have a bit of trouble with the threshold, but finally rigged up some forms to acommodate my needs. After letting the floor and treshold dry overnight I cleaned up all the loose sand and installed the bench. Maybe later this week I'll have some pictures of a tiled floor.

Walls are all taped and floated, ready for tile.

The floor for the bench is complete. Unlike the normal shower floor, this area of the floor is level, not sloped, so that the cinderblocks for the bench sit level and plumb.

Floor is complete (and perfectly sloped, if I do say so).

The threshold did give me a little grief. This side was about 6 1/2 inches from the floor to the top, and a half inch thick layer of deck mud does not like to stay upright without a little help. Needless to say, after this side fell off once it was time to make some forms.

The final layer of deck mud is in and the threshold is finished. I've just built my first shower pan. Crazy.

The bench is complete and now it's officially time to tile. Interesting note. . . it just so happens that the shower was exactly wide enought (and I mean exactly) to accomodate five 7 1/2 cinderblocks, with thinset, perfectly. Funny how that works. I'm pretty sick of cutting anything concrete (pretty much sick of cutting, period) so I was praying that I wouldn't need to bust out the grinder to cut anything else today. Talk about an answered prayer! God is good!