randini
In the Trades
I'm trying to do what I understand is a pretty standard thing, tiling a basement shower that was previously a painted cement pan.
Looks like the previous owner did a reasonable job, the pan has a PVC liner that extends up and over the curb. The walls are laminate and they did a good job at all the corners with aluminum trim. I'm guessing the PVC runs up under the laminate. The curb is covered with some white product, forget what it's called but it's ~1/8" thick, white, brittle, like mock marble, glued to the PVC which is over two 2x4's sealed with some kind of brushed on product.
Where it gets weird is the laminate goes right to the floor, with aluminum trim at the bottom. Then they caulked over the aluminum and painted the floor, the caulk, and about 4" up the laminate, with some kind of sanded sealer paint. The laminate looks OK but I can see that some moisture has wicked up under the bottom edge. They must have done the paint shortly before we bought the place (~2 years ago) because it looked great at that time but has become pretty badly stained since then. A month or two ago it finally started to peel, and a single 1" round chip came up.
I'm using glass 1x1 tiles in 12" sheets. My plan is to screw backer board to the top and back of the curb (leave the front white) and build it up so that I can tile the top and back and use whole tiles. Then put mesh tape in all the corners and the curb and use Redgard to seal the whole deal, over the floor and a few inches up the walls. Don't know how well the Redgard will bond to the laminate (I'll score it up first) but my hope is that it just needs to be watertight and won't carry any real mechanical load.
So I've chipped all the paint off, down to bare cement. It was pretty loose, even the parts that seemed tight popped right off once you got a corner under them.
Here's the real question. How do I raise the drain? It's ABS with a snap-in strainer, currently flush with the cement. I've found dozens of posts on various plumbing and tile forums describing the extend-o-drain idea, and saw one at Lowes. Basically it's a spacer and O-ring setup that screws in under the strainer. Raises the strainer about 1/4" to accommodate the tile. But how do I do this for a snap-in strainer?
The yay-hoos at HD kept bringing me whole new drain assemblies and telling me I just (just) needed to hack the whole drain out of the cement and put in a new one. Called a real plumbing supply house and they understood my problem but didn't have any better answer.
Does anyone make a replacement snap-in strainer with longer tabs? That'd be sweet. Otherwise my best current plan is to buy another plastic drain assembly and mill off the bottom of it. Basically make myself a spacer with a seat for the strainer, and then cement it to the existing ABS drain flange (I've cleared off the top of the installed drain completely and would sand it down to fresh ABS). Or I could cement in a cross-piece to mount a screw-in strainer to? Then use the extend-o-drain? Seems sketchier as the screws would be pulling a lateral force on the weld, and there'd be leaking under the o-rings into the mortar if/when it failed.
At every store I've been to I've seen a half-dozen choices for replacement snap-in strainers, so these things have got to be common. And adding a layer of tile is common. So how do people do this?
Another question: How much space do I need? How much should I allow for the depth of the mortar under the tile?
Looks like the previous owner did a reasonable job, the pan has a PVC liner that extends up and over the curb. The walls are laminate and they did a good job at all the corners with aluminum trim. I'm guessing the PVC runs up under the laminate. The curb is covered with some white product, forget what it's called but it's ~1/8" thick, white, brittle, like mock marble, glued to the PVC which is over two 2x4's sealed with some kind of brushed on product.
Where it gets weird is the laminate goes right to the floor, with aluminum trim at the bottom. Then they caulked over the aluminum and painted the floor, the caulk, and about 4" up the laminate, with some kind of sanded sealer paint. The laminate looks OK but I can see that some moisture has wicked up under the bottom edge. They must have done the paint shortly before we bought the place (~2 years ago) because it looked great at that time but has become pretty badly stained since then. A month or two ago it finally started to peel, and a single 1" round chip came up.
I'm using glass 1x1 tiles in 12" sheets. My plan is to screw backer board to the top and back of the curb (leave the front white) and build it up so that I can tile the top and back and use whole tiles. Then put mesh tape in all the corners and the curb and use Redgard to seal the whole deal, over the floor and a few inches up the walls. Don't know how well the Redgard will bond to the laminate (I'll score it up first) but my hope is that it just needs to be watertight and won't carry any real mechanical load.
So I've chipped all the paint off, down to bare cement. It was pretty loose, even the parts that seemed tight popped right off once you got a corner under them.
Here's the real question. How do I raise the drain? It's ABS with a snap-in strainer, currently flush with the cement. I've found dozens of posts on various plumbing and tile forums describing the extend-o-drain idea, and saw one at Lowes. Basically it's a spacer and O-ring setup that screws in under the strainer. Raises the strainer about 1/4" to accommodate the tile. But how do I do this for a snap-in strainer?
The yay-hoos at HD kept bringing me whole new drain assemblies and telling me I just (just) needed to hack the whole drain out of the cement and put in a new one. Called a real plumbing supply house and they understood my problem but didn't have any better answer.
Does anyone make a replacement snap-in strainer with longer tabs? That'd be sweet. Otherwise my best current plan is to buy another plastic drain assembly and mill off the bottom of it. Basically make myself a spacer with a seat for the strainer, and then cement it to the existing ABS drain flange (I've cleared off the top of the installed drain completely and would sand it down to fresh ABS). Or I could cement in a cross-piece to mount a screw-in strainer to? Then use the extend-o-drain? Seems sketchier as the screws would be pulling a lateral force on the weld, and there'd be leaking under the o-rings into the mortar if/when it failed.
At every store I've been to I've seen a half-dozen choices for replacement snap-in strainers, so these things have got to be common. And adding a layer of tile is common. So how do people do this?
Another question: How much space do I need? How much should I allow for the depth of the mortar under the tile?
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