New Shower

A few weeks ago, our basement tenants mentioned that they just started noticing water under the shower floor.  Uh oh...  Their shower is a plastic insert that was in place when we moved in and we had no idea what we'd find when we pulled it up.  A few days later, when Mikey had a free weekend, he pulled up the floor and found --- Tile.  Perhaps the tile from 40 years ago when the house was built.  When one of the previous owners renovated, they just glued an insert over the tile and siliconed the new drain into the old one.  Well, the drain started leaking in between the two shower floors (big surprise) and now we had to figure out what to do with it.

After some consultation with friends and my dad, Mikey decided to tear out the whole thing and start from scratch.  He is an amazing handyman, as is my dad, but they bit off a bit more than they could chew.  It wouldn't have been terrible, but it's the only bathroom for the tenants, they have kids who go to bed at 8 p.m. and it was Mikey's first week of the fall semester of nursing school.  Ugh.

The demolition was something I could help with especially since I got to use a power chisel to take all the tile off.  We had to remove everything down to the concrete floor since the old shower pan was completely rotted out.

Once the demo was done, there was still a lot of work to do to get the walls even, level and backer-board on before the tile could be installed.  When all that was finally done, Ben, one of the tenants took over on the tiling.  Thank god he used to be a professional tiler.  Mikey became his assistant and after over 20 hours of work and several cases of beer, the tile was done!  Mikey, my dad and I picked out the tile all by ourselves!  I think the colors turned out nice and I really like the shelves Ben made.

We had to have a door custom made because the walls were slightly uneven and it was just an odd size.  So, we had the door made and installed and, TADA, completely new shower!  Apparently I don't have a picture of the final product, but, just imagine: a bronzed metal frame with an opaque door that looks like water is running down it, with a 6 inch opening at the top.  Beautiful.

It was stressful for both Mikey and me for this project to spring up on us the first week of school.  Unforeseen expenses of money and time are always a bummer, but luckily, it was finished in about 1.5 weeks and we had the money in savings to pay for it.  It is really nice to have a basement apartment and tenants in it who pay over half our mortgage, but when things aren't going smoothly, the stress is exponentially multiplied.

Thanks again to Mikey, Dad and Ben for all your hard work on the Shower Project!!!  It turned out fantastic!