The shower project

On December 16, during a maintenance job, (changing seals for the shower faucets), something broke in the faucet--behind tile.  Thankfully the water was off, so there wasn't a water loss.  But to get to the problem, the tile had to be taken out around the faucet.

 

 

The faucet needed to be replaced, but there would be no way to replace the tile again around it.  The wall of the shower had been spongy the whole time we've lived here and we knew there was water damage behind the tile wall.  We intended to replace the whole thing at some point--just not the week before the kids started coming home for Christmas.  But there we were, with no choice but to proceed.  Rowen cut the pipes and capped them off so we could turn the water back on for the rest of the house.
Rowen had some cancellations on his job installations the next Tuesday, giving him some time off work, so he started tearing out the bathtub (which had cracks in it), tiling, and walls.  From research, he found out an oversized bathtub like ours, (installed in 1991) wasn't available, so we decided to do a walk- in shower instead.

 
(Notice the short stub wall in the picture below.  There was a glass window above it.  This was removed and replaced by a taller wall later.)

 

Rowen found that the insulation was moldy behind the wall, and the tiles were holding onto the surface only of the green board.  It had delaminated behind the tiles.  He had to Saws-all the tub, piece by piece to get it out.
Meanwhile, we had called Jeff and Lesa and asked if they had time in their schedule to come and work for us sooner than they had planned to come for Christmas.  The Tuesday night before they were to leave Iowa and come, this happened to them:

 A deer came racing across the corn field and smashed into them before they knew it was coming!

 

 Thankfully they weren't hurt, and Lesa was leaning over on Jeff's armrest when the window busted.  A dear friend of theirs let them borrow his van so they could still come the next day.  They stopped by the scene of the death the next morning to pay their respects to the poor dear.  (deer)

 

 I heard they took the broken off antler along with them, but I never saw it.

So that was the interlude of the deer.  Back to the shower story:
They arrived on Wednesday evening, and he got right to work on fixing the capped off pipes and re-plumbing the new faucet on Thursday.  Rowen put new insulation and plastic on the outside-wall.

 He also found us a shower base for a better price without the wait that ordering from a store would have entailed.

On Friday morning, reinforcements arrived when Tim and Brenda came with their children, Charissa and Felix, and Elizabeth, who had spent the week in Joplin visiting her grandparents.

 Preparing the opening for new cement wall boards.  They also took off the little stub wall.

 Base in place

 Grandpa and Felix supervising the work Tim and Jeffrey were doing.

 

 Jeffrey built a new wall to completely replace the short stub wall that had been there before.  

 This is before all the cement board is on the front of the shower wall.  They insulated this wall too, and it makes the other bathroom noise next door quieter in our bathroom.  We wanted to have "niches" for shampoo bottles.  They were unavailable in stores, so they designed and built in niches, covering with the cement wall boards.

 They lined the new shower base with cardboard and taped it off to keep the glue and grout off of it.

 They covered the new wall with cement board too, even though it is outside of the water area.

 

 

 

 Saturday night, they started tiling the first shower wall.  It was "supposed" to be fast and easy...

 

Cute supervisors!

 

 Photographer got involved!

 Jeffrey doing straight cuts.  For the strange cuts like around the niches, they had a cutter in the garage.

 We had bullnose tile for the windowsil and all around the edges.

Work continued on the tiling on December 25.  We were swapping the 25th for the 28th for our family Christmas anyway, so it wasn't a problem.

On December 26, Tim and Jeffrey grouted the tile that was done.

We had to buy more tile for the new wall, so that got done after Christmas week.

Eventually, we got the shower part of the bathroom remodel done and started taking showers in it, but it was after the Christmas guests were gone.  Everything takes longer than you imagine it will, that's for sure!  We so much appreciate the work our boys did on the project.  When Randy got here, he helped too. We didn't get any pictures of that, but he helped with installing the shower doors, cutting the parts down to the exact size that was needed.

This is the view from our sink/closets side of the room, showing the new wall all done, and the far wall is the other side of the project.

 Taken the other direction toward the sinks and closets.

 The wall outside the front of the shower.  The corner tiles were different because the tile did not come with corner bullnose pieces.  

 The shower installed and the shampoo bottles installed in the niches.

 In the back of the shower, we have a foldable step stool to replace the edges of the bathtub we used to have.

There's more to come in this bathroom project in future months, as we want to replace the flooring and put down tile, replace the sinks and cabinet, put up towel rack and touch up paint. We are so thankful to have this much done.  It was a lot of work and we appreciated the extra hands and all the cooperation as we had 17 people here during Christmas week and only one working shower!  

We made some memories in unusual ways.  A later post will highlight the more normal Christmas memories.