Shack No More

During our home inspection, our inspector notified us of some water damage in the shower wall. He had an interesting technique of using the butt of his hammer handle to pound on the wall. It was obvious from the sound the wall made as it went from healthy to damaged wall, as well as the movement of the wall itself. In fact, if he had continued to hit the wall I’m sure some tiles would have come crashing down.

This became the obvious first target in our home renovation. Every morning I cringed at the thought of what might be going on behind the shower tile and figured every shower helped contribute to more water damage.

Our budget was extremely limited due to the fact that we had just sunk all of our savings into our home purchase so we limited the scope of the project to the shower area.

Before any renovation and repair could happen we needed to select new tiles and fixtures and I needed to educate myself on the ways of the tile setter. The only real preference we had going into our selection was that Andrea really wanted brick “subway” shaped tiles. We ended up settling on a porcelain brick shaped tile that looked like travertine from Novabell. To add some visual interest and color we added some square tiles with colored mica and purchased a mosaic of small travertine squares. Everything was purchased locally from Tiles for Less for a grand total of around $1200.

For the education piece I hit the John Bridge Forums in a big way. The forums are so packed with knowledge that it was overwhelming at first, but after a couple weeks of research I felt comfortable enough to plan out the project.

So with materials in hand we were ready to start! Our initial plan went like this.

1. Tear off old tile wall.
2. Repair damage to wall.
3. Install new Hardiboard.
4. Lay tile.
5. Install fixtures.

The first order of business is my favorite part, demolition!