The Corian shower is done!

Last week the Corian shower got off to a good start with the floor and back wall getting installed. This week, I continued on with the install. Instead of measuring for the side walls, I opted to template for a more accurate fit. To do this I glue thin strips of plywood together to get the exact shape of the wall. This also allows me to locate exactly where to cut out for the shower valve and the shower head.

Installing the walls

Once the templates were done, I dropped them onto the sheet of corian and traced out the lines. After cutting to the lines, I brought each piece in and set it in place. Both pieces fit the first time. Woohoo! I placed silicone globs on the wall and one by one I set the pieces in place. To get them to sit flat against the wall, I installed spreaders between the two pieces pushing them away from each other. I left those in place until the silicone cured. (sorry, I forgot to get a pic of this)

Installing the shower trim

Once the silicone cured, I took the spreaders off and got the corian cleaned up a bit. I then siliconed all of the corners in the shower. It’s starting to look finished! While the silicone was setting up, I installed the shower controls and the shower head. We didn’t end up having an oil rubbed bronze shower arm, but I had a chrome one on hand, so I installed it for the time being. It kind of looks funny, but it’ll work until the oil rubbed bronze arm arrives from Amazon. You know Amazon, right? The company that now takes a week for two day shipping. But I digress….

Final water connections

With the shower trim on, it was time to test the shower. Only problem……the water lines haven’t been hooked up yet. I went ahead and installed shut off valves on the water line to the toilet and the lines to the sink. With the shut offs in place, I then turned off the water to the house and crawled in the crawl space to work on the water lines. In the crawl space, I tied the newly ran bathroom water lines into the existing water lines. Done. Before turning the water on I wanted to do one last thing – install the shower drain. For this I needed Oceana’s help. I went down in the tiny crawl space below the bathroom and she passed down the final piece of plumbing pipe to tie in the shower drain. She glued the end and passed it to me where I stuck it in place. While I was down there, I installed the nut on the bottom of the shower drain which seals it against the fiberglassed floor.

Successful water test

I crawled out of the crawl space and dusted myself off. Time to test the water. Sure enough, everything worked well. The next day I dried out the shower floor (it was still a little wet from testing the shower the day before) and lightly sanded the primer that was over the fiberglassed floor. After scuffing it, I applied a coat of white boat paint. Now it looks finished! Once the paint sets up, I’ll apply a bead of silicone around the gap between the bottom of the corian and the fiberglassed floor. That’ll be for next week though.

Jury duty!

I had hoped to get more done this last week but I was scheduled for jury duty on Wednesday. If I got tied up on jury duty for a few days, I would have trouble hitting some deadlines at work. Because of that, I opted to work through the weekend on business projects instead of house projects to make sure I was covered just in case. Fortunately, jury duty was cancelled.

My business work

For those interested in my work work, I just made 80 tambour panels. Typically when you think of tambour, you think of a rolltop desk. The panels I made are similar but they were on a flexible backing and are made for installation as wall paneling (accent walls in hotels, bars, etc). And when I say that I made it, I mean I took a big stack of rough sawn lumber, planed it to thickness, ripped it into a bunch of narrow pieces, ripped those pieces in half, sent those pieces through a molding machine which produces each individual strip of tambour, then glued those pieces to a backing in a vacuum bag. It’s a pretty neat deal. I’ve become a manufacturer for a panel distributor out of Palm Beach. Looks like I’m going to be busy making panels for the next while!

That’s all, folks

That’s all for this week. I’m looking forward to getting the floor tile installed and then the toilet set for the bathroom. It’s nearly wrapped up! As always, thanks for following along. For your enjoyment, here’s two pictures of the previous shower in this bathroom. The corian is just a wee bit nicer.