CONTACTLeaking Shower Rebuilt with Rouge Zellige
in Silver Lake, Los Angeles
Rouge Zellige + Matte Black
- LOCATION
- Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA
- DURATION
- About 9 working days, start to finish
The transformation.
Our clients had a major leak coming from the shower in their upstairs guest bathroom, and it was doing water damage to the ceiling of the bathroom on the floor below. The bathroom needed an update anyway, so they wanted the shower remodeled to their taste and, this time around, done properly.
The rest of the room already had a strong point of view: black paint and black hardware throughout. The old shower, in grey tile with chrome fixtures, was the one part of the room that didn't belong to it.
When we opened the shower up, the waterproofing in the pan had been done totally incorrectly. The previous contractor had used the wrong type of cement for the base of the shower pan, and the hot mop over it was not sufficient to meet waterproofing standards. Either problem on its own is enough to put water where it doesn't belong.
The walls had their own issue. Most of the wall tile was not properly adhered, because the thinset had only been spread on the substrate and never on the back of the tile as well. Without that second coat, a tile can look fine on the wall while barely holding on to it.
We waterproofed the entire shower with a Schluter Kerdi system, one of our favorites, and every product in it is covered by Schluter's lifetime warranty. The drain is a Schluter tileable grate, so a piece of the rouge zellige sits right in the drain and the floor reads as one continuous field of tile. For setting material we used Schluter ALL-SET, the mortar Schluter approves for installations on its membrane shower systems. The grout is Laticrete Permacolor in Raven.
The 4×4 zellige in Rouge came from Zia Tile here in Los Angeles. It is handmade, so no two tiles are quite the same shade, and that variation is what gives the wall its depth.
For the edges we used black Schluter trim rather than mitering every corner. Black paint and black hardware already ran through the rest of the bathroom, so the trim carries that material into the shower and protects the tile edges at the niche, the window return and the outside corners. For the same reason we replaced the chrome shower fixtures and door hardware with matte black: the valve, arm and head from Perigold, and the door hardware from CRL.
The demo. The previous contractor had installed a cement base 4 to 5 inches thick, far thicker than the standard 1.5 to 2 inch dry-pack mortar bed a shower pan calls for. There was no shortcut through it. Lots of banging around with the chipping hammer was the only way to get it out, and only then could the new shower start.
Questions about
this project.
How long does it take to rebuild a leaking shower?
This one took about nine working days, start to finish. The slowest part was the demo itself, because the old cement base was 4 to 5 inches thick. On a rebuild, what the demo turns up is usually what moves the schedule.What are the signs a shower was built wrong?
Here the first sign was water damage in the ceiling of the bathroom below. Once we opened it up, the pan had the wrong type of cement under an insufficient hot mop, and most of the wall tile had never been properly adhered. Staining on a ceiling under a bathroom, grout that keeps cracking, and tile that sounds hollow when tapped are all reasons to have a shower looked at before the damage spreads.Can you fix a shower another contractor built?
Yes, this was one. Our clients wanted it done properly this time around, so rather than working around the previous contractor's shower, we took it out entirely, found what had failed, and started over from the base.What is a hot mop shower pan, and why didn't we keep it?
A hot mop is a traditional pan waterproofing method: hot asphalt mopped over layers of felt before the mortar bed goes on. On this job it was not sufficient for waterproofing standards, and it sat over the wrong type of cement. We replaced the whole assembly with a Schluter Kerdi system rather than patching a pan that had already leaked.Why does tile come loose if it was set in thinset?
Because thinset only grips what it touches. Here it had been spread on the wall but not on the back of each tile, so most of the tile was never properly adhered. Covering both the substrate and the back of the tile is how you get full contact, which matters most in a shower, where the wall is wet every day.Why use black trim instead of mitering the zellige corners?
Mitering is the right call when the goal is for the tile to be the only material you see, as on our Pasadena olive green bath. This room already had black paint and black hardware throughout, so black Schluter trim ties the shower into the rest of the bathroom and protects the edges of a handmade tile at the same time.What is a tileable drain grate?
A drain cover that holds a piece of your floor tile, so the drain shows up as a thin outline instead of a metal grate. We used Schluter's tileable grate here. It is part of the same Kerdi system as the waterproofing, which keeps the pan, the drain and the membrane working as one assembly.
More on this kind of work: see the full service.
Similar projects: Highland Park Tile, Porcelanosa Half Bath.
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