M
monkey3
Hi,
So I've got to the end of the main chunk of the work... finally... and it's looking pretty good if I do say so myself.
Sorry about the photo quality (there are plenty more poor quality photos of the complete build, start to finish) and the walls and tiles are genuinely much straighter than they look in the pictures.
A quick run down of how I've done it:
Added extra 4 inch joist under the floor fixed to the back wall and many noggins between the joists to firm the floor up.
Rebuilt the left hand wall out of 2x2 timber (rather than the metal upright partition that was there) and 4x2 in the cubicle to bring it out to the tray
18mm marine ply across the whole floor.
Aqau-boarded the whole room.
Used Mapei primer across the walls and floor.
Fitted the low-profile shower tray with sand / cement mix.
Tanked the whole cubicle tray to ceiling and well out past the tray on the walls using mapei tanking tape. Taping everywhere there's a change of plane and between the aquaboards and then painting the whole thing with mapei tanking paste / paint / putty / slop.
Fitted the 12mm filled and honed travertine around all walls except the back using mapei keraflex (keraquick was just too quick for me to work with) with a 10mm trowel and back-buttering the tiles first.
Cleaned up the trav and sealed the faces using Lithofin Stain-stop being very careful not to get any in the grout lines.
Grouted the trav and cleaned up the haze on the trav (about 5 times)
Fitted the Chinese black slate to the back wall.
Grouted the slate with black grout.
Cleaned up the haze on the slate (about 50 times as they are quite rough - slight downside in that some of the grout lines look a little washed out now but it's not too bad)
Sealed everything using Lithofin Stain-stop.
Fitted a massive extractor fan (it's an inline fitted a fair way away so it's very quiet) that clears the moisture out of the room faster than bad wind clears a lift.
So everything should be as watertight as a duck's butt... I hope.
However, in my haste (it's only taken me the better part of 9 months... ok, ok, 12 months but I've been on holiday a few times... and I've had to completely redo the heating system in that time as well
) I've not left the grout out of the corners for silicone.
How much of a problem do you think this will be as the water hasn't really got anywhere to go if the grout in the corners cracks.
My thinking is that if / when the grout starts cracking in the corners then I'll gently / gingerly scrape it out and replace it with silicone but in the meantime I might as well leave it (or my other half may well leave me )
The main shower head is a rain head so no high pressure jets pointed at the joints.
Any thoughts?
thanks,
Russell.
So I've got to the end of the main chunk of the work... finally... and it's looking pretty good if I do say so myself.
Sorry about the photo quality (there are plenty more poor quality photos of the complete build, start to finish) and the walls and tiles are genuinely much straighter than they look in the pictures.
A quick run down of how I've done it:
Added extra 4 inch joist under the floor fixed to the back wall and many noggins between the joists to firm the floor up.
Rebuilt the left hand wall out of 2x2 timber (rather than the metal upright partition that was there) and 4x2 in the cubicle to bring it out to the tray
18mm marine ply across the whole floor.
Aqau-boarded the whole room.
Used Mapei primer across the walls and floor.
Fitted the low-profile shower tray with sand / cement mix.
Tanked the whole cubicle tray to ceiling and well out past the tray on the walls using mapei tanking tape. Taping everywhere there's a change of plane and between the aquaboards and then painting the whole thing with mapei tanking paste / paint / putty / slop.
Fitted the 12mm filled and honed travertine around all walls except the back using mapei keraflex (keraquick was just too quick for me to work with) with a 10mm trowel and back-buttering the tiles first.
Cleaned up the trav and sealed the faces using Lithofin Stain-stop being very careful not to get any in the grout lines.
Grouted the trav and cleaned up the haze on the trav (about 5 times)
Fitted the Chinese black slate to the back wall.
Grouted the slate with black grout.
Cleaned up the haze on the slate (about 50 times as they are quite rough - slight downside in that some of the grout lines look a little washed out now but it's not too bad)
Sealed everything using Lithofin Stain-stop.
Fitted a massive extractor fan (it's an inline fitted a fair way away so it's very quiet) that clears the moisture out of the room faster than bad wind clears a lift.
So everything should be as watertight as a duck's butt... I hope.
However, in my haste (it's only taken me the better part of 9 months... ok, ok, 12 months but I've been on holiday a few times... and I've had to completely redo the heating system in that time as well
) I've not left the grout out of the corners for silicone.How much of a problem do you think this will be as the water hasn't really got anywhere to go if the grout in the corners cracks.
My thinking is that if / when the grout starts cracking in the corners then I'll gently / gingerly scrape it out and replace it with silicone but in the meantime I might as well leave it (or my other half may well leave me
)The main shower head is a rain head so no high pressure jets pointed at the joints.
Any thoughts?
thanks,
Russell.
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