Creative Do-It-Yourself Ideas and Inspiration for Your House and Family. Currently making _______________.
It’s always amazing to me how quickly the finishing touches come together in projects. It’s like an iceberg – the hardest part is least gratifying and often hardest to see. Once the plumbing was roughed in and everything structurally was sound, this project started to come together crazy quick.
Alriiight. Now that we’ve got our shower and floors tiled, we just needed to seal them. That is not a job for the faint of heart, let me tell you. Luckily, it’s fast.
Let’s step back and recap: We are unfortunately way over budget, but hey, we’re ahead of schedule! We should be done by May 1. We had a lofty goal of $2,500 for our bathroom renovation, but we’re currently around $3,200. This was our ambitious plan, but we realized all the little things we forgot to take into account along the way: Nails, screws, bags of mortar, caulk… That stuff adds up fast! We do have returns to make which will hopefully bring some balance back to our universe. In the grand scheme of things, that’s still extremely inexpensive for a whole new bathroom that we DIY’d. We’re almost done, and we don’t expect to exceed $3,500.
First things first. We had in mind that we’d like some shelves in the shower, right? Not any after-the-fact shelves, but real built-ins. There are a few ways to get recessed, inset shelves installed from the get go. Let’s explore the options.
The natural next step after pouring the shower pan is? You guessed it: Adding shower walls. And you can’t just use regular drywall, you need to really waterproof that new shower of yours. It’s a high-stakes job, but you can do it!
Here’s a glimpse of us mudding and taping (with a little help). It’s in reverse order, so you’ll see the shower walls up first, then the rest of the bathroom. Enjoy!
All we do is work work work work work. Thanks Top 40 radio for that one. We’ve been listening to the same 40 songs all spring break due to limited music options. But, back to the task at hand.
This video is lengthier, so feel free to breeze through it at your own pace. The pre-slope is a one night project, but it’s important to give it plenty of time to dry (48 hours to be safe) before advancing to the rest of the shower pan. We’ll walk you through the steps.
No, not tinsel. (Although it’s almost tinsel season too!)TENSILE. That’s my new word of the week. It’s a measurement of how tense or resistant to stretching a thing is.
We needed some high-tensile sheathing tape for last weekend’s project. It’s basically really strong tape that can hold a lot of weight before breaking. This particular tape can withstand 28.3 pounds per inch. Pretty impressive for tape! It must have went to the gym. If you want to get all sciency, read more about it.
What, the neighbors called? Oh ok, we better turn down.
In full disclosure, we did this way back in October. Some of the details of the process are a bit fuzzy in my memory, but I’m sure Joe could replicate it in his sleep. This is by far one of the most-used spaces of the house (yard). So the speakers were a huge upgrade.
If anyone wants to listen to music outside, they only need to bluetooth their phone or mp3 player to the sound system. You can even leave the phone indoors — safe from the water. Volume control is an arm’s length away. Nice for the wintertime. We did this all in one night, so bare with me on the documentation. Should have taken notes, goshdangnit!
Started with a standard outdoor pair of speakers.