Ceramic Tile Showers

House of the Week: Village living in the city

People who call the Eastwood section of Syracuse home like that it feels like a village, even nicknaming it "The Village Within the City." Residents celebrate the community's camaraderie with special events such as an annual five-mile Park-to-Park Walk/Race, a Market Day and a community carnival, all sponsored by the Eastwood Neighborhood Association, which offers residents lifetime membership for $10.

Eastwood boasts a 9-hole golf course, an ice-skating rink, a library and a historic movie theater as well as restaurants, boutiques and other businesses. The cottage-style front door, original to the 1925 home, opens to a small foyer with a mosaic tile floor. A French door divides the foyer from the living room, with its brick, wood-burning fireplace flanked by built-in bookshelves with glass doors beneath small-paned windows. The living room, and most of the rest of the home, has red oak floors, dark cherry woodwork and crown molding. The dining room is roughly square, providing ample space for a table with seating for six to 10 people, a sideboard and a hutch. A wrought iron ring adorned with electric lights that look like wax pillar candles illuminates the room. The oak flooring, woodwork and crown molding continue in this room, which can be closed off from the rest of the house with French doors and a swinging door to the kitchen.

Setting Up A Ceramic Tile Shower Stall | Shower Stall

Other than improving the looks of your bathroom, constructing a ceramic tile shower has many other advantages. Ceramic is a very nice-looking material and available in many designs. It’s a highly durable material that resists scratches and needs slight maintenance or care. If considering the installation of a ceramic tile shower, you should cautiously choose appropriate tiles. For a shower it is good to be using ceramic or mosaic tiles with glazing. Estimate the number of tiles required for the purpose from the plan of your house. And, do add a margin of ten percent to cover wastage, which can’t be avoided altogether. Initially, it may appear to be a simple job that can be accomplished within a few days, but needs a lot of accurate work and patience with detailed planning and may take longer than your expectations if you are looking forward to a lasting installation.

1. Framework and plumbing

Before getting started with the installation you need to prepare the walls and take care of the plumbing requirements of the shower. Simultaneously, you can provide insulation between the studs for the purpose of soundproofing. For fixing of water resistant concrete paneling to frames you’ll need sufficient quantity of studs and a quality-nailing strip. You may also need some furring strips to have enough nailing surface.

Measure the walls and mark position of all the openings required for plumbing. Copy these measurements on concrete panels.

2. Install the concrete panels

With the help of a knife having carbide tip and a T-square cut off the fiberglass mesh on one side of the panel and snap it up like usual drywall, thus making openings for different pipes. The rough side should be installed to face the inside of the shower. Use aluminum or galvanized roofing nails for attaching the panels to the framing. Seal the joints using fiberglass mesh tape and provide a liberal coating of polymer glue, especially at the corners and joints.

3. Pour cement on the floor

Cover the drain with a sponge to prevent its getting blocked due residual dusts.

From the drain, using a level put a mark on the walls around the shower, measuring ¼ inch for every foot between the drain and the walls. Next, draw one more line using a red marker; about 1 inch above the first mark to ensure that the difference between that mark and the level of the cement remains uniform. Using these marks, draw leveled lines on all sides the walls on the inside of the shower. Screen the cement with a slight tilt in the direction of the drain. As it dries up, smoothen the surface using a block of concrete and do away with the dust.

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