Shower Remodel, Weekend 5

Weekend 5 is officially over as of tonight!  I plan to spend tomorrow preparing for TALE 10 (Texas Annual Letterboxing Event).  Friday night I was touching up the thinset, and decided I wanted to add a ledge to put my foot when shaving.  Thankfully we had some bricks left over from the sidewalk project long long ago...

And now I have a ledge!

 Here we are preparing to put in the drain.  We filled in the hole around the waste pipe with sand and cut the pipe to the correct height.

Notice the black plastic in the hole - it looks like it was originally made with a flower pot! 

Next we added tar paper on the concrete and installed the drain.  The drain is another Hydro Ban product made by Laticrete.  It's specifically designed to work with their paint on waterproof membrane.  It's much easier to install than conventional drains for this type of shower construction.  The black plastic parts under the drain are Quick Pitch guides which make it easier to fill in the dry pack mud at the right slope.  Basically help angle the slope so water drains rather than puddle on the shower floor.  You are supposed to use them on a nice flat level base, but our slab was far from level around the hole for the pipe.  So instead of putting in another layer, we shimmed them (using some old carving material!) and made sure we had the right slope afterward.  A little hot glue helped hold everything in place - and you won't find that in any advice from the contractors!

And here is the final picture...the mortar bed installed!  You can't see it here but the outer edges of the mortar is slightly higher than the drain.  I owe a big thank you to Steve on this for mixing and hauling all that mortar. You wouldn't think there is over 150 lbs of it in there!

Here is a video that explains the shower construction method we are using and how it gets waterproofed.  I like this method because the seal goes above the mortar and there is less material in the shower that can absorb water.  Conventional shower construction puts the seal below the mortar.  So if the shower is used several times a day there is no way the mortar can dry out.