Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!

The journey has begun!  As you can see by the amount of tools, equipment, radios, and supplies, we are definitely not in Kansas any more.

 
We've quickly gone from orderly, tidy and almost boring demo to complete engagement.  I'm not complaining, mind you.  This is still contained and organized, but it has become a bit zany once all the activity came to life.

The shower seems to be a point of significant transformation.  It is the most involved "tear out" in the room and is the source of what will be the primary crafting effort.  As The Blogged Word's title bar suggests, blogging is as much art as it is science.  The shower will encompass both.

First, the art.

When the tile eventually go on the walls, they will follow a diamond pattern, with each tile angled 45 degrees, with the points up, down, left, and right.  Add to that a decorative trim of smaller 1 inch tiles around the walls at eye level and the placing of carefully cut tile pieces on the floor (pan) to follow the contour, and I expect to see the most challenging jigsaw puzzle around.

Now, the science.

The pan itself will be the science.  Start with a bare floor, add the drain positioned in the center, install quartered plywood panels, sloped to the center drain, spray with a fiberglass and resin cocktail, apply a base of cement-like mud, seal and then install the tile, and you get a science project of which any 5th grader would be proud.  I'm excited to see that "pan" out.  Sorry.  

Notice below that once the old shower enclosure was fully removed, part of the floor has been exposed.  This is to move the drain location slightly since we are gaining some additional depth due to increased framing (detailed pictures on that later.)

Between the two plumbing elbows shown, the drain itself will be moved a few inches to maintain the location in the center of what will be a slightly deeper area.  This will be an interesting series of steps as the shower pan is "built" in place, starting with the newly positioned drain.

A number of steps are yet to come to build this pan.  Based on how it's been described to me, it will be around long after the house is gone - and will never leak.  This will be fun to watch!