bathroom floor

Typically, the bathroom floor is not a place that excites me. It's a place I skillfully ignore in order to put off cleaning as long as is reasonably possible.

But, I've never gotten a chance to build my own bathroom floor before.

Our main bathroom is divided into 2 sub-rooms. One houses the sinks and W.C. and one houses the shower and the Japanese-style soaking tub — the bathing room, if you will.

Papa Builder is always the thinker, the planner, the engineer, and the uncompromising designer. He didn't slack off when it came to the bathroom floor.

Every house we've ever lived in had the problem of water pooling under the emerging recently showered individual. The little rugs typically used to mop the mess up are not very attractive and get stinky a mildewy far too quickly. The solution? Let's turn the whole floor of the bathing room into a beautiful draining surface.

We start by cutting down the supporting floor beams at complicated angles to accommodate the drainage plane.

Then triangles were cut for each drainage plane (one under the shower and one for the whole bathroom) and assembled over the beams. They were caulked and nailed in place to keep the floor from shifting or squeaking.

Next, we got the drains placed and supported from underneath and put another layer of triangles in place to bring the drains up to the proper height underneath and make the floor a little stiffer.

Then the floor, whose beams had been compromised a little bit from cutting them down, was supported from the underside with 2x4 blocking.

We tested our drains and they definitely drain. Woo-hoo!

Coming up... Rubber waterproofed underlayment, a galvanized custom-made drain pan, and a slatted Lyptus wood floor over it all for beauty and drainability. Stay tuned!