Master(ful) Modification

We have lived in Tradewinds (our house) for nearly twelve years. The "Grand Lady" is showing her age a bit, here and there.

When our contractor friend John came to redo our upper, back porch  earlier this year, we asked him to take a look at our master shower. We were entertaining a renovation down the road and wanted his expert advice. He said he would do the job and to let him know when we were ready.

We were ready, more than ready.

The Colonel and I began to really look at the tiles of our master shower. Some of the grout around the tiles was beginning to have small gaps in it. There were also increasing areas of grout that were becoming resistant to our cleaning efforts. It was time to call John again. He told us to start shopping around for wall and floor tile.

The Colonel and I saw some tile we liked and we bought a sample of the wall and floor tile to see how it might look in the shower. The new blue color would go well with our bathroom walls.

John and I went tile shopping to make certain the samples The Colonel and I liked could still be viable options (they were). We also shopped for grout color, the metal surround and the marble threshold. After shopping, John treated me to delicious shrimp lunch. On November 26, John and Dan (someone John has worked with before) began the demolition of our master bath shower.

Our master bath is on the second floor and John decided it would be best to carry all demo refuse by hand, down the stairs, out the front door and into the bed of his truck. The first day of demolition was very humid. I felt a bit sorry for John and Dan as they lugged the heavy pieces of tile out of the house (but that was what we were paying them for right?).

Demolition was a noisy and dusty business.

John brought down a piece of wallboard with tile on it. The wallboard had some black mold on it. He said it was contained to that piece but it was good that we were having the shower remodeled.

John told us the remodel would take several days. We said that would not be a problem because we could use what was once the kids' shower, across the hallway.

The first night of being without our master shower, I popped into the kids' shower. I pulled the curtain shut and turned on the water. I waited but no hot water came out of the tap. Our son had just used the shower a couple of days prior when he was home for Thanksgiving (I texted him to ask if the water ever got hot while he was here and he said no, not really...why he never told us, I do not know). I shut the cold water off, got out of the shower and yelled to The Colonel that we had a problem. Thank goodness we had a backup shower to our backup shower.

The Colonel went out to the cottage, turned on the water heater and came back into the house. We did not have to wait long to have hot water for our showers. With our bathrobes on, we went out into the cool, dark night, walked along the sidewalk with flashlight in hand, and into the cottage.

We had to use the cottage shower for about five days. When John finished demolition of the shower and brought in the plumber to move the pipes over, we had the plumber also fix the kids' shower.

John and the tile man prepped the shower for tiling. They attached waterproof boarding onto the wall and put down a mud floor before they covered it with a heavy rubber surface.

The tile man who worked on our shower was semi-retired and he said he was doing this job because it was John who asked him to do it. John said he wanted to hire the best tiler he knew to do our shower. I am glad he did.

It was interesting to see the tiling job progress. First the walls were tiled.

When the walls were done (minus grout), it was time to tile the floor and niche.

Then came the grout...

Finally, our shower was complete. The renovation was completed in about two weeks (to be fair, John could have had it done a bit sooner but The Colonel and I took a little trip to St. Augustine during the renovation and John could not work on the shower then).

The old shower had corner shelves but we wanted a niche in the new one. We also wanted a larger shower head and had it moved to a different wall (the faucet handle remained in the original place).

Old vs. New...

When John was here working on the new shower, he noticed that our side door is in need of repair. We have been noticing that too. The water from storms, especially from Hurricane Irma, has caused the wood to swell and crack. We have hired John to replace the door's jamb for us but we will wait until the new year to start that project.

It is good to have a house builder as a friend.