jilly's shower. part two.

Something even more exciting than the shower remodel is going on today, if that's possible.  I'm guest posting over at {Brooklyn Limestone}!  If you don't know about Stefanie's amazing blog, let me introduce you to it so you can love it as much as I do.  She has great ideas and tutorials, throws epic parties, lives in an amazing house, and is pregnant with her first baby, a girl.  This week, her blog has been dedicated to a series of "trash to treasure transformations".  I know you'll love it, so go on over and become her newest follower!

Where were we?  Oh yes.  It's all coming back to me now......  Daddy and I were just leaving Lowes, full of supplies, energy and lots of hope!

Day 1 actually went really well and we accomplished so much.  We tried to get everyone who was home that day involved where we could.  Jake received the exciting job of removing some of the dirt around the exposed drain pipe.  My apologies for all the terrible pictures in this post, but when your hands are covered with cement and roofing tar, you're just doing the best you can. 

After Jake had completed his task, Daddy mixed some concrete up and brought the surface closer to level with the rest of the floor inside the shower.

The next item of business was the insulation.  He shoved it in between all the studs, and stapled it along each side.

After that, it was on to the black tar paper.  Overlapping the seams and edges, we just stapled it onto the studs, sealing the overlapped seams with roofing tar.  Roofing tar comes in a tube, just like caulk, and you put it right into your caulking gun to use it.  It is SO messy and sticky.  BEWARE! 

After all the black tar paper was on, the next step was to install the Durock cement board.  You definitely want to use the cement board as opposed to green sheetrock.  I asked about 20 professionals, and their answers were all the same:   Use Durock.  You just score it with a utility knife and it snaps apart.  My dad did all the measuring, and Carter and I helped him put it up.  The cement board is installed using screws, so be sure you know where your studs are.

Remember the "before" picture of my shower?  I'm sure it has scarred you for life.

And remember my inspiration photo?  Shooting for something a little more like this.

Time to build a wall, my friends!  Daddy had that thing constructed and put in place in about 30 minutes.  I was so impressed!  You can also see the little notch cut out of the bottom of the cement board to allow for a couple more 2x4's to build the step up.

The reason we didn't put the wall up before we started doing everything else was because the shower is pretty small, and we wanted to have some room to work inside it.  With the wall up, only one person can be standing in the stall (comfortably) and we really wanted the work that day to be a group effort.  After the wall went up, I'm afraid my dad was on his own in there.  He repeated the process with the insulation, tar paper and Durock on the inside.

We used regular sheetrock on the outside since it won't be exposed to water.  The opening to our shower is on the opposite side of the inspiration shower because of where the plumbing is.  Also notice we added some height to the step.  Are you all starting to see it?  My dream taking shape?  Please say yes.

We were super tired, and as you can see, the sun was starting to set.  We called it a day. A successful day.

Part three to follow.   And part three is kind of sad.  You might want to cry for me.  If you've ever remodeled a shower, I'm sure you've picked up on our HUGE mistake by now.  

Don't forget about our current {GIVEAWAY}. We've decided to extend it til next Tuesday, the 18th.  It's a fun one, so get yourself signed up!