I knew this was going to happen, but it’s still disappointing: the… rough-in valve, I think it’s called? (the plus-shaped thingy in the picture) for the new faucet and shower head does not appear to be terribly compatible with the one we have in place, so that all has to come out– and that is not, period, point-blank, no questions about it, work that I am capable of or interested in doing. So we can’t cover that wall up until we get a plumber out here, and we can’t get a plumber out here until Friday. So that somewhat limits the scale of the work we can get done today, but not in an unsatisfying way; it should still look like we got a crapton of work done by the end of the day if everything else goes well.
The new goal: get the cement board up on the two walls that don’t conceal plumbing. That’s all. And by “up,” all I mean right now is measured, cut, and screwed into the studs; while I have the proper seam tape for the cement board, I’m not even sure I plan to do that today, since I’m still sorting out what seem to be conflicting opinions on whether the joins on the cement board actually need to be separately mortared, and if they do, if they’re mortared before or after applying the tape. The dude at Lowe’s, who certainly sounded like he knew what he was doing, said that all we needed to do was tape the seams since we were tiling over it anyway and that we didn’t need to worry about joint compound; I’ve seen other sources that indicate that what we want to do is fill the seams, but what we want to use is the exact same mortar that we’ll use to install the tile. I feel like this makes one step into two steps in a way that doesn’t feel necessary, but I’ve not done enough reading to be confident yet on anything other than “definitely don’t use regular joint compound,” which is fine, because we didn’t buy any.
I’m confident on the measure/cut/screw part, which also involves a tiny bit of restudding (just adding a couple of support points for the cement board in places that are weird) and setting up a j-channel around the tub that will keep the cement board from resting on the tub. That should be enough for one day. We have to go get the boy at 4:30; that leaves us seven hours. Doable, I think. We’ll see.
There will be pictures later, of course, as I either fix things or destroy them. Or the world will be enveloped in flame. It’s a crapshoot!
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If California is any indication of the future of the world, you may as well attempt the fix!
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Don’t trust employees at Lowes/Home Depot to know anything at all. I had one tell me with an air of certainty, and a straight face, that you didn’t need to do anything to waterproof a shower you were tiling. Just hang some cement board and stick tile on with mastic – he was certain that constituted a water barrier, and was the method he used at his house. This might result in a shower where the tile stays on the wall, for a while, but I’d pay money to see the look on his face when he eventually had to look behind that wall at the rot and mold he’d generated.
I taped and filled my seams with mortar. If you waterproofed with plastic sheeting UNDER the cement board, you might get away with filling the joints when you tile. if you intend to use RedGard or similar to waterproof on top of the cement board, you’ll need a solid surface to waterproof, so you’ll need to fill those seams with mortar.
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Tape first, then mortar, or mortar first, then tape? I’m seeing both.
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Oh, also; if you think you might ever want to anything like grab-bars, now is the time to put extra blocking inside the walls to support them.
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Doesn’t matter, as far as I could tell. I taped first, on account of I wanted to actually see some benefit from the self-stick nature of the tape. As long as you mash the mortar through the holes in the tape, though, the end result should be about the same either way.
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