Jeffrey Court Week 4
Let’s build a shower!
Real talk: this is the first shower pan I’ve ever made. So I’m watching a ton of YouTube tutorials to make sure I do this right!
Time for the shower walls! I chose to use the Schluter Kerdi boards for the shower walls and I recommend them a million percent! They were lightweight and cut easily with a utility knife. You use the included screws and washers every 8 inches or so into the studs.
I did most of the walls and then it was time to plumb the shower valve. Dun dun dun! My husband and I laid out the valve the night before and opened the Home Depot app to find exactly what we needed. We ended up using 4 swivel elbow to PEX.
We’ve used pex before and felt comfortable using it again. Some people have very strong feelings about the longevity of pex but it’s up to code so that’s all that we cared about. We also used SharkBite connectors from the current brass water lines to pex. They have pex drop ears too so we used those for the shower head and the shower wand. Once we had everything in place, we plugged the two drop ears and turned on the water to test and make sure there were no leaks. We left it over night and no leaks! Hooray!
Then I closed up the last piece of Kerdi board. It was so easy to cut out holes for the valve and drop ears.
Next up was another very important part: waterproofing. Using the Kerdi band and Schluter AllSet, I covered every single screw and every seam. I also covered the curb with the Kerdi board and Kerdi band. They make inside and outside corners so I used those all around the curb corners. I also used their valve covers and mortared those in place. No leaks for us!
After the waterproofing dried overnight, it was time for the fun! I fell in love with THIS blue tile from Jeffrey Court and knew it needed to be the entire shower and tub walls. Since parts of the bathroom were more traditional, I decided to lay the tile in the vertical stack pattern for a modern edge. It also made tiling go fairly quickly. Thankfully Tim was there to keep mixing more mortar and bringing me tiles and cutting special pieces.
For straight cuts, we used a manual tile cutter in the bathroom and the complicated cuts required a wet saw outside. This tile cut so easily. I used 1/16th spacers for a pretty small grout line. We decided to not do a niche and added marble shelves to hold shampoo. I even included a lower shelf for shaving my legs! I’m all about functionality!
We glued the shelves to the Kerdi board using Kerdi Fix and they dried SO strong! Very pleased! An absolute must when tiling is a laser level. You need it to keep all the lines plumb and level. We have this one and love it.
Next up will be finishing the tile floor and the shower pan.
