Water and Bathrooms
Water is essential for life, but it can also cause damage.
That’s where water-proofing comes in.
I wanted to talk in this post about waterproofing in a bathroom restoration project and tell you, by way of example about a bath rehab my buddy did awhile ago.
This bath was located off a basement office, under a wide set of stairs and next to the heater, mechanical furnace room. It had no windows and the one window in the adjacent office was down under a deck and never got opened.
So the bathroom had no ventilation, except for a six inch fan. The room was seldom used and the shower, about 3ft by 4ft had not been used in years.
The front shower wall was eaten away by mold and water damage with no tile and sections of drywall missing around the lower 3 feet of wall.
Being a basement bath, the floor was slab and the wall which was the side of the shower was a foundation wall.
The first major step was to tear out all remaining shower tile, four walls and the ceiling as well as most of the old drywall and installation behind it.
The sheet vinyl and wood baseboard molding all had to go because of mold.
The floor and walls and framing, were cleaned with Tri Sodium Phosphate and then bleach to kill all the mold.
The drywall, which had been removed, was replaced with half inch reinforced cement board, Durarock. Put this up with cement board screws which are coated, won’t rust and will countersink themselves. Regular drywall screws will rust and frequently snap off if you push it and try to get them flush.
All of the joints and seams were finished with water resistant drywall compound.
Just a word about Durarock and cement backer boards. While water resistant gypsum based drywall (referred to as blue board or green board) has been around for decades, it is not waterproof. While the fiberglass mesh reinforced cement board products can become completely wet and will not deteriorate as is the case with any gypsum drywall product .
He installed a much bigger ventilation fan with a heat lamp to address the ventilation problem.
The shower was retiled with inexpensive four inch white ceramic tile. The shower floor, or pan, was concrete, raised above the slab floor and was in good shape so it required no extra prep work.
The shower floor was finished with one inch ceramic mosaic tile which is widely available in one foot sheets with reinforced backing. All tile grout joints were sealed with waterproof grout sealant.
If you like the look of one inch mosaic tiles it’s available in ceramic, a variety of stones and glass. It can be used in sheets to cover large areas, such as countertops, or cut up for accent and border strips. Shop around because prices can be vastly different.
I want to say a final couple of words about the world’s apparent obsession with waterproofing bathrooms and mold prevention. Depending where you live like if it’s you live in a dry climate or a humid climate, mold can be an every day thing or not. When you do run into it, it’s either normal or indicative of neglect or a serious water leak. You can have replaced the deteriorated walls with standard drywall, or water resistant blue board and used a regular drywall joint compound (mud).
The choice to use water proof and resistant materials gives one some assurance the shower won’t fall apart again.
Additionally, projects requiring replacement of the tile, walls, floor and baseboard in a room with proven ventilation and mold problem. Usually, it only seems obvious to use material which would prevent the reoccurrence of the problem later.