Mike & Shannen's Shower

[mwixon]

Hi all -

I'm Mike and have been lurking on this board for some time. My wife and I are beginning a master shower suite project. The shower will use kerdi and I'd also like to use the Kerdi floor. I've purchased both of John's books and they have been very helpful in the planning.

The shower will be a steam shower with a steam generator.

Attached is my proposed layout. The wet wall will be the wall on the far left, I'm still working on drawing that.

I have one initial question:

The floor space is slightly larger than the kerdi floor. The remaining area will be mud. Is my plan to have the bench go over the kerdi floor ok? When one frames the bench do I simply screw the vertical framing members through the kerdi floor?

Thanks! I plan to document my project here, so stay tuned.

-Mike

[ceramictec]

I would install the bench first. then cut your Kerdi Tray to fit.
do your mud, then install your Kerdi over everything.
also less mud for you to tackle.

[mwixon]

Brian -

Thanks for the quick reply! This forum is great!

As for you answer, I guess that was one of my Doh! moments - I don't know why I didn't think of that!

-Mike

[Marge]

Mike and Shannen, welcome to the forum.

Hope you will share some pitchers with us as you move along!

[davem]

Hi Mike, look forward to following your project!

[ceramictec]

anytime,
keep us posted.

[mwixon]

Ok, the demolition of the area is going well. The plumber just left after putting a tankless heater in that area.

In the mean time I headed over to Tile-Experts to start gathering my materials. I've been thinking about using Kerdi-KM for the pipe protusions, I figure it's cheap insurance for a steam room.

After looking at the picture though, I'm a bit confused. Please see the picture below. Is that Ditra behind the Kerdi? What's Ditra doing in a shower?

[John Bridge]

Hi Mike,

It's not a shower. Kerdi is also used to waterproof the seams in Ditra. I think the picture is turned wrong. It's probably a floor.

[mwixon]

Today was demo day - getting the fiberglass shower out wasn't fun. Most of the demo is done and I've attached a few pics of the space.

One question, I should remove the paper from the insulation where the kerdi is going to cover that space - correct?

You can see I left two walls of blueboard/skim up as it had a smooth finish. I'll redrywall the rest once the frame and plumbing is done.


The closet door is going to get closed up and relocated. The drain is clearly going to have to move. I'm going to build out the wall where the vent pipe and gas pipe are to gain clearance.

You can see in one or two of the pics I reframed the ceiling to bring it down to 7'6" for the steam room.

[sandbagger]

welcome, Mike - now how about putting your name in you signature (User CP) so we don't have to keep scrolling backwards?

you should slice the paper on the insulation behind the Kerdi; no need to remove it. What is that "blueboard" you mentioned? Why not just have a clean start?

[mwixon]

Blue board is a special type of drywall used mostly up here in the northeast. It installs like drywall and then the entire surface is skimmed with plaster.

And I might rip the rest down. It depends on how straight the wall is or if I need to frame it out a bit for plumbing.

Next step is to open up the floor and see what I'm dealing with in terms of the drain.

[mwixon]

Hi everyone -

I've got the floor opened up to move my drain and I didn't find good news in there

Basically there is an engineered beam about 2' 3" from the outside wall which is going to limit how far back I can reloacate the drain. It turns out that after reframing, our shower is going to be about 55" wide. So the drain is not going to be exactly centered.

I really don't think I'm up to doing that much mud so I'm still planing on using the Kerdi tray. This means that I'm going to have to cut it slightly more on one side than the other.

I will use cut tiles on the first row to make up for the difference and ensure that the second row is even. If the pan is sloped 1/4" / foot then it the tiles should only be slightly larger on the one wall. The wall tiles are going to be 12x12


Any thoughts on the above?

Any advice on cutting the tray? I was planning on using a table saw, but it's plastic - how do you think that is going to work out?


Thanks!

-Mike

[muskymike]

Hi Mike, I would mud the floor if the drain isn't centered. If you opt the Kerdi tray you can cut it with a utility knife.

[mwixon]

I don't have the Kerdi tray yet - it's on the way already. I was thinking about a hybrid approach.

1) Cut the tray to say 4x4 (I know you can buy them that way but I already bought the 6x6).

2) Put the tray down over the drain.

3) strike a level line across all the walls, higher than the edge of the tray

4) mud the small areas to the level line around the tray

This limits the amount of mud I need to do and will keep the wall tiles nice and level on the first course.

Thanks for your thoughts

[Brian in San Diego]

Mike,

There's a 6x6 tray? I guess I better check the product line-up! If the tray is 6x6 and you cut it down to 4x4 you can do what you are describing. If you cut unequal amonts of tray from the sides then your plan will have a slight flaw. The slope on one or more sides won't be the 1/4" per foot that the tray has. And to do what you want to do you'd have to center the 4x4 in the shower space making it necessary for the drain to be centered. If your drain isn't centered I'd use mud.

Brian