Shower Demo

Last year our shower started leaking. You know, just one of those annoying little drips that isn't a big deal, but you know that it is wasting water and when your shower isn't perfect (which ours never has been since we bought the house) you worry about water sitting in the shower. So, I set out to surprise Bump around Father's Day and thought I would fix the leak. Not a big deal right? I researched online, bought the needed parts and dug in. About an hour later I realized that I could not take apart the valve that should have been "so easy to do." I decided to be smart and wait for Bump to get home and help me - so much for the surprise.

Well, he couldn't get the part removed either and ended up getting frustrated and tried to force things the way that they shouldn't be forced and bent the copper tube too much and made a small hole where the hot water comes into the valve. Then he stopped and said he was finished. The next day I figured out a way to remove the inner workings, but the damage had been done. Luckily I was able to JimmyRig things so that we could at least turn the bathroom's cold water back on and use the sink and toilet. The not water has been turned off in that bathroom for about a year now. Fun huh?

Again, I decided to surprise Bump (this time for his Birthday in November) and called an old friend/cousin by marriage/Elder from my mission, who is a plumber, to come and fix the shower. He came and after about 3 hours of trying several options (including soldering that would not hold!) he said that we would need to remove a big hunk of our wall to get at the plumbing (which was done wrong initially, by the way, that's why the big hunk of wall is needing to be removed). I told him to hold off because I have wanted to re-do the entire shower since we moved in anyway and why tear up the wall right then when we would be doing it eventually anyway. Make sense? He didn't charge me anything and gave me a quote to come back when we were ready for him down the road. No Birthday present for Bump that day. :( Poor guy!

Well, tax season is here and we are getting a decent return. We are tired of having only one working shower in the house when there is one just sitting there waiting to be fixed, so we have begun the shower remodel.

Bump tapped on a wall a bit with the hammer and when he broke through it smelled so much like mold - and the house is 100 years old so who knows what you are dealing with - so he decided to be very cautious and went and got a special mask rated for mold and lead. This is what we first uncovered. Hello exterior wall and you can see the mold on the liner and on the drywall behind the tiles.

Bump with his cute mask.

We ended up keeping the door shut most of the day and the window opened. Bump moved the big garbage can right outside the window so he could just throw the debris right out and not take it through the house. He took out several layers (tile, green board, older drywall and plaster) and took it right down to the studs, or lack of studs if you look at that exterior wall.

And this is what it looks like right now. I hung up the shower curtain to try to keep the kids from wanting to play in there. He even took out the nasty liner and broke up the old concrete base which wasn't done right and was very uneven creating puddles in our shower. Everything is very nice now and ready for the next steps.
Here is the cursed valve on the left and the outside 100 year old wall for you to look at and enjoy.
The plumber comes on Tuesday to get everything fixed right with a whole new valve, copper tubes, etc. Then we need to hang up new green board. Then the Cultured Marble people will come for a final measurement and they will be installing a new cultured marble base, surround and trim. It will be so sleek and nice and won't have any grout to clean or worry about if it's leaking or not. I will keep you posted on our journey. I am just glad that we are finally on it. :)