Considering the experience the OP had with his contractor, I can't blame him for wanting to tackle the job on his own.

(BTW, aliceinwonderland, I thought your comment about art and innovation was completely relevant to the conversation).

I agree, technology and innovation are the most creative places to be in business, and the characteristics and skills artists have overlap.

Tile installers spend years honing their expertise through work experience and apprenticeships. Engineers go to school and then work in the field to become good at what they do, whether it's building highways or bridges, or planning the construction of buildings. I wouldn't call an engineer to remodel a shower and I wouldn't call a tile installer to inspect a bridge. Isn't it a no-brainer to hire an expert in the field to do work that you may not have time or knowledge to do?

I don't think anyone is arguing with that, jerzeegirl. The problem arises when the available experts . . . aren't. In my ideal world I would never DIY another tile job.

The OP isn't calling an engineer to do his tile job, he's considering doing it as a DIY project in his own home. That's not unheard of and lots of DIY'ers complete perfectly acceptable home improvement projects all the time. Learning something new generally entails starting with limited or no knowledge.

Ditto what alice said.

And I would rather call on the transferable skills of an engineer for the shower than on a tiler for a bridge, building or computer system.

No one says a homeowner shouldn't do his own job....but let's be clear...there is a learning curve. It will be his first shower pan job ever. Most tile people spend years honing that skill. So even though his shower pan job may be adequate, there is also the chance it might not be and he might end up having to do it again. I guess that's the chance he will be taking. His call.

One thing is for sure. It will be far better than what 90% of the homes around here have. Been looking around more now and seeing what many so-called experts here recommend and they are all wrong. One guy who has a big tiling business in the area has a series of videos online and all of his pans are done wrong (basically like my contractor tried to do). My co-workers maintain there is not a contractor in GA that knows how to do a shower correct. I think obviously that's an exaggeration but it does seem more are doing it wrong than are doing it right. :(

"Transferable skills"?

My neighbor designed and built a multimillion dollar fuel gas recovery system in a refinery that paid for itself in less than a year.

He called me over because he couldn't get his wash machine apart. I slid a pipe over a wrench ("cheater bar" is the vernacular), creating a 5' long wrench handle lever. The nut gave way immediately.

So now your neighbor knows how to create a cheater bar in the future. That's great that you were able to teach him something new. But that's not exactly an example of a skill that couldn't be mastered by just about anybody.

jellytoast:

Fair enough, but it does make the point that tradespersons have as much to show the professions as the professions show the tradespersons.

I think the OP realizes that, as he has gone over to the John Bridge forum for advice.

A good tradesman is worth their weight in gold. I think I might have found the guy for my tile floor as he had good information as to how he wanted to do it and why. Just waiting on his quote and timeline as he's pretty busy (as he should be if he's good).

That's great russp. It's always nice to have the name of a trustworthy tradesperson to call in case you need him or her! The whole process is about building trust, isn't it?

Hard to debate and talk about trades with people hiding behind a name,
No info on their trade skills, no info of their location, no idea what
they bring to the table other than repeating jargon as if they are in
the trade themselves.

all the while hiding behind a screen name.

many pros have advised this man to think it thru, look for a real pro, PULL PERMITS, to no avail.

It is your home, and this is OUR internet so yes you can all pontificate as if you actually build showers. so confidently.

Abrasive , attitude, or not. I call it like i read it. and try to help even the most hard headed internet homeowners.


its an HGTV world full of table talkers here , possibly a gang mentality at least with the few of you of whom I have gone and read many of your posts.......at times its like an episode of the view ...

throw in the odd supposed engineer and bam they all have it figured out.

I rest my case.. A big group hug to all of you experts . It was never my intent to impress my politeness to you or have you hire me, rather try to correct all the misinformation this poor guy was getting and believing as some of you perpetuate it.

Good day XOXO. you know where to find me im right here NOT hiding.

<i>What makes it so difficult is the lack of understanding and following of
proper procedures by people who don't think those things are necessary
and prefer to just wing it.</i>

Yes, and that's a big problem, perhaps even a problem for an engineer. If you have never done a shower pan before, how do you know you are doing it correctly? How do you know that the one little thing you decided wasn't important turns out to be really important? Do you think he should ask the helper who is "assigned" to him? Even being in direct communication with the god of shower pans might not work out if you don't happen to have that one skill or bit of knowledge you need to do it right or if you forget something and it's too late to change it. I think a person attempting a difficult job that he has never done before should be a little bit more humble about his potential skills.

haha. that is really funny.

gwrussp....what name are you using at John Bridge? (Like to follow your progress)

I have no username yet but I will have to post up my progress and I'll post here when I do that. I have to laugh at the people giving me hassle about doing it myself. The two pros I got from the CTEF site both have not given a quote. I'm fairly certain based on what they both said while here that they are too busy to bother with this small job so I won't hear back from them. Hence, I'm probably DIY no matter whether I want to be or not! :)

Transferable skills"?

"My neighbor designed and built a multimillion dollar fuel gas recovery system in a refinery that paid for itself in less than a year.

He called me over because he couldn't get his wash machine apart. I slid a pipe over a wrench ("cheater bar" is the vernacular), creating a 5' long wrench handle lever. The nut gave way immediately."

I don't see how this encounter shows that engineers cannot research and understand shower pan construction or follow construction specs to implement.

It shows that skills transfer both ways.

It shows disdain. I wish houzz would just leave all of the non-spam comments up so potential clients of those using this as a marketing tool could have a clearer picture of whom they might consider hiring.

I don't think it shows disdain at all. I think it demonstrates that people are concerned and are trying to encourage the OP to hire a professional to do his shower pan. The reason is because of his first post which states that the guy he hired messed up the shower pan, and prior to that, he messed up the floor tile. Now, I am pretty sure that if someone didn't lay my floor properly, I would halt the job right there (and I am not an engineer and don't even play one on TV). I would either have the tile guy remove the tile and re-install it until it's right or tell him to get the heck out. Why didn't this OP stop the job as soon as he knew that the installer was incompetent and doing a bad job? Why did he allow the guy who couldn't lay down a basic tile floor continue on to the shower pan? So, no, not disdain....just concern.

I was referring specifically to Mr. Corlett's washing machine story, which had nothing to do with helping the OP.

I can answer that. He did all the bad crap in a single day while I was at work. Well, pan was done afternoon previous and it was not obvious how bad it was (ie: not sloped correctly) until he started adding tile to the wall. At this point the tile has been removed, he's ordered me new tile, I've been credited for cost of what he was going to do, and soon he will be done with the paint and drywall and will be out of the house freeing me to hire whoever I want for the tile portions if I wish.

What the tile guy lacked in skill and talent at least he made up for in decency. It sounds like your break up with the tile guy at least had a good resolution.

"I was referring specifically to Mr. Corlett's washing machine story, which had nothing to do with helping the OP."

Along with the comment further up towards the beginning, about certain degreed professions (which we hear on a regular basis).

Like Bookmark

"demonstrates that people are concerned and are trying to encourage the OP to hire a professional to do his shower pan. "

Of course the pros are always encouraging people to hire pros. Along with paying more, more, more. They are here promoting their trades and businesses.

I don't think an engineer needs anyone's help gauging their limitations.

<i>I don't think an engineer needs anyone's help gauging their limitations.</i>

Why would he be different from other other people gauging their limitations? Does being an engineer confer some kind of special innate knowledge? Does it matter what kind of engineer he might be? Would an accountant have the ability do just as well as, let's say, an electrical engineer?

Really?

In the end I think fairly I will have taken a 3k loss over all this in terms of what I finally get for my money for what I finally paid. Sucks but at least I can say I was more than fair to him (he's definitely not making a profit). If you don't think a 3k hit will make me from now on be very careful with who I hire and do my research up front then..... :) I have to be thankful it was not more as really it could be a lot worse.

Allow me to amend snookum's statement to: I don't think an engineer, in particular, needs anyone's help gauging their limitations.

The implication from some tile pros in this discussion is that the OP is somehow less capable because he is an engineer, which is patently ridiculous. That said, yes, being an engineer does confer some kind of innate way of investigative problem solving, not necessarily knowledge. That is not to say that someone from any profession would not or could not utilize the same techniques. The dismissive attitude toward the ability of anyone that is not currently "in the profession" to learn and be successful is anathema to the intent of any DIY forum, regardless of the DIYer's chosen profession.

Just registered on John Bridge as gwrussp. I'm thinking about using one of those custom shower pans. Anyone know anything about this company? http://www.showerpanstore.com/ez-pan/

I know nothing about them, but the process seems doable. What is the cost? Seen many of these at an outrageous price. If so, just do a regular mud bed for about $20.00

Don't know and not sure the material it's made of either. I sent in a drawing for cost estimate. I know the tile-redi stuff runs about $700 or more but not sure about this one. The walls of my shower of course are not square but they say they can deal with that as long as your drawing is accurate. Mud bed is cheap and after the hours of reading on John Bridge and other places I'm sure I know the right process, just there is that off-chance I still get something slightly wrong. Also, I do like the idea of their hidden drain (very cool) on the one insert.

Another alternative: https://www.showerbase.com/site/showerslope_product_details.html Run's about $480 for my 48" by 42" or so shower (curb I guess is extra) and can be cut as needed. Pricey for what it is and without integrated curb and edge i think this is more likely to fail than creating my own pan. :( Seems like a bad idea.

A preformed pan has its own traits to deal with mainly the drain assembly and how that attaches to the waste pipe. Some are good, many fail due to flexing. The next hurdle is how to marry the wall waterproofing to the pan waterproofing particularly at the curb. If the tile flange does not pass the curb, the water can run down the wall, onto the curb and into the wall. The third reason is the drain pipe location in relation to the pan. That pipe has to be set dead perfect for the drain to seal in most cases. A tilt to the drain pipe is part of this equation as well as the front/back side to side problem.

For those reasons and the obvious cost savings, a DIY drypack pan is the best way to go. Even if you mess up the first try, you'll double your pre-slope costs to a whopping $40.

Yeah, those pre-fab units are great if I was truly starting from scratch as I've seen some that go way up the wall and you can then overlap the Durock, Kerdi, whatever you use down over the lip. I'm going dry-pack and just going to be extremely anal with my slope, liner, final slope. I'll do the requisite flood test on pre-slope and final. The shower is open to the basement below so it will be very easy to make sure it's all draining as it's supposed to. Plan to embed the durock into the top-drypack mud bed as seems to be recommended over on John bridge threads (still verifying this one).

Some stacked coins just to the height of the water will let you know if its leaking. Be sure to pay attention to the drainage detail for pea gravel surrounding the clamping drain during the installation of the upper layer of drypack over the liner. You don't want to close off the weep holes by packing the drypack against the drain.

Probably using that Mark-E industries weep hole protector but not using the rest of their kit as I don't like the idea of the plastic sticks in the bed. I still need to study this better though and may end up adding some pea gravel too for good measure. I understand the concept just need to study pictures and vids some more to be sure I don't screw it up. :) I know I need the drain to be slightly off the bottom of the pan (I gather this is so the pre-slope can come up to the edge of the drain bottom and then liner on top will sweep the water directly into the weep holes). Oh yeah, also seen where silicone placed around lip of drain where it meets plywood. Don't know that this is needed since it's under the liner and drain lip but I guess it does not hurt anything.

As long as you don't put silicone to block the weep holes you are OK. Under the liner is good.

When watching videos, shy away from the GA tile guy. He's prolific, but not accurate. Do follow any manufacturers videos.

Yeah, too funny as I had just commented on his video tonight along with many others saying how it was wrong based on what experts were saying. In GA things are very lax and no real oversight of contractors so bad ideas perpetuate among them. Very sad. I wish I had done my homework up front but at least I stopped it before it got so far as to cause real damage.

Thanks for the comments, Cabot & Rowe. Good to see you here, Paul.

As an update to this the bathroom is finally coming together. I'll post pics here when bath is fully done. Lot of work doing all the tile but I took my time and it looks awesome. Far better than the job done by the builder in rest of the house and way better than the contractor I had hired.

The shower pan build was a bit of a pain and I did the first layer twice (ie: ripped out first attempt and started over). Once you get the hang of it though it's not bad. Still, if doing it again I might think hard about a pre-formed tileable base despite the extra cost. The end-result though was great and it drains amazingly well as I made sure to slope it slightly over the minimum recommended.

One advantage of doing it yourself on the floor was with the natural marble floor my wife could take her time figuring out which pieces to use where so that the overall pattern was optimal. Don't think you could do that with a pro without extra charges for sure.

I found I really like the Ditra. Great product for tile and goes down easily. I used the recommended adhesive for it but think in the future I'll just use Custom's Uncoupling mat mortar for laying the Ditra.

Wonderful. May I suggest that when you do a "Reveal" that you post a separate "Reveal" thread, with it's own title. This way your fabulous pictures will be standing on their own. You could link this thread to the "Reveal" thread, and link the reveal thread to this one. Some of us GW'rs like the pretty pictures and don't need all the gory details of failures, etc, lol. But the linked threads would be nice :)

ETA, you can post your pics in one posting, instead of a separate post for each picture.

Thanks. It was not letting me post all the pics in one post for some reason as I tried. Anycase I might add a thread with before and after pics.

I like the thread idea with before and after. It will be a lot of fun to see. I was having problems with even posting one picture a week or so ago. That issue lasted for several weeks it seemed. Now my pics post fine, and even right side up. In the past if the picture was taken with my phone, and in the portrait format, it would post sideways.