Transcription
Guys, in this video, we're going to show you how we templated, fabricated, and poured this walk-in shower. Stay tuned and enjoy the video.
All right, the homeowner has prepped a shower for us. It has Hardy Board and it has two coats of Green Guard on it. So now, what we're going to do is we're going to take our rough measurements and we're going to dry fit the foam to the walls. Once we do that, then we'll be ready to put the quick coat on and get after it.
All right guys, one thing to remember when you're doing the foam is you have to take a film off each side. That way, you have something to stick to, 'cause the epoxy will not stick to this. We're doing the back panel first. I'm going to take my multi-tool and just kind of transfer this edge right here. That way, when we put it up against that tile, it's going to sit nice and flush and you'll have a nice reveal on the front. If it's a reveal, you need to come in on the inside of that and keep that edge flush and then chamfer that out. That way, you don't have a 45 at the end. We're going to have to come up over, kind of caddy-wampus this thing. So, I'm trying to get the right measurement and I also have to leave a little gap so when I slide it in there, it's going to have room. So, I'm going to probably leave it about a quarter of an inch short. That way, I have some wiggle room 'cause the other thing is when we come with a half inch on this side, it's going to cover up that eighth of an inch and it'll look just fine. So, see that's pretty tight right there and the wall's a little bow right here, but you're not going to see that once we put that other panel on. 11 and a quarter to 11 and a half. So, the next one's going to be crooked. So, we're going to go 11 and a half to 11 and a quarter. Here we go. This is the test to see if it's going to fit. Beautiful.
Since I know that this fits, I'm going to tape it on the front and see how I'm going to get it out of here. And then, once I'm done with that, then I'll tape the back side and you'll see just this little bit of tape will hold it together and it makes a good seam. See, just that little bit. It's just amazing. Yeah, it helps tremendously. Look at this, you couldn't have done that with the pizza granite. So, let's get the measurements for the sides. Let's go 32 and a quarter. I'm going to cut the foam to sit on the inside of the wall to the foam and then I'm going to go all the way up with that. I'm going to scab on a piece of MDF on the outside of the foam and sit on top of this little ledger here. The piece that goes up over here is going to give me a smooth edge for one, and the other thing too is that they're going to be able to screw the brackets for the glass into that MDF and then it'll be nice and tight. That way, they can go through the MDF into the stud that's right behind this wall. 'Cause if you were going to screw just through the foam, it would just squish that whole thing up in there. So, that way with the MDF, that gives you the protection. Plus, that's going to be uh outside the shower wall and it's going to be coated with the epoxy, so no problems there.
So, now that it looks really good, we're going to put a little stub out piece in the faucet here or in the head. And then that's going to tell me where my hole is going to be. The indention from the faucet and the shower spigot. Now I know exactly where to drill and it'll be a perfect match every time. So, we're going to use an inch and a half right there, and then we're going to use a four inch right there.
Kenny, how did you learn all the handyman construction knowledge? Uh, I didn't have money to pay people to do stuff. We didn't have YouTube back then, but we had just like magazines and, uh, home shows and stuff. I know a little bit of everything. The best, uh, advice one guy always gave me is it's, uh, wood and nails. You can always build in. If you don't like it, you tear it up and redo it. So, the, the thing that you got to remember with this foam, it's not real rigid, so you have to take your time and go slow. And there it is. Let's see if this fits. And if it doesn't, it's Rhonda's fault. But if it does, it's all me. So, I think we'll just go four and a half 'cause it goes four and a half all the way down with that same reveal. So, we're going to cut those four and a half inches, cut them to length, and then, uh, we'll quick coat those on to the foam. I don't recommend trying to use the 2p1 glue because it doesn't adhere as good. The quick coat works a lot better.
Bull knows the edge with a router. Correct. That is beautiful. That is a perfect fit. We are going to quick coat this together and then the fiber mesh is going to go all the way over. The fiber mesh will act like rebar and it'll hold it together and you won't have any issues. I'm going to tape up the holes. It's going to do two things. For one, I'm not going to waste a, a lot of epoxy. The epoxy is going to stay on the top. For two, I don't like how it just makes like a big old sunburst where all the epoxy goes down into it. We'll do our color coat over the top. Then I can come from the backside because this is already giving me my center for the hole saw. I can set the hole saw in there and pop right through the epoxy and it makes a nice pretty cut.
All right, we got everything set up. We're going to start mixing the quick coat. To apply the mesh, we're going to do each individual panel separate that way we have enough working time to complete the job. So, we're going to use 3 ounces per square foot, um, and then we're going to apply the mesh. Best thing to do is hurry up, get it out of the bucket and spread it out. That way it doesn't get so hot and you're able to work with this. We're just going to make a nice even coat, make sure we cover the whole board. All right, go ahead and pull it your way just a hair. All right, right there. All right, so what I'm doing is I'm pouring it in the crack here. I have the tape underneath and I'm going to use that as my hinge. Make sure all that epoxy gets down and then when you push it together, see how it pushes all back up and you're good to go. One thing I'm going to make sure is I encapsulate this whole piece and just try to get the epoxy all around it. B candy, this is looking awesome.
So, we've got the, got the quick coat down. Fiber mesh is pressed down into the quick coat. So, what's the process from here moving forward? So, we're going to let this sit. You can let it sit for four hours, but for us, we're going to let it sit overnight. We'll come back in the morning, we'll cut the excess, uh, fiber mesh off, do a little sanding, and then put another coat of epoxy on it. Perfect, man. It's looking great.
All right, so what we're going to do is cut the fiber mesh as close as I can. And see how easy it is that I can get a cleaner cut. I'm going to take a 120 and then just clean up the edges where the excess epoxy is. That way, it'll just give me a nice edge. So, we'll just hit the top and bottom of that. This first coat, you don't have to worry about being perfect because the next coat, it's going to help level it out even more. And then we're going to pour another 3 ounces on top of this.
All right, so we're fixing to do our second coat of quick coat. The reason why we're doing that is because we're not doing a dirty pour. And the reason why we're putting the second coat is so, so we can ensure that the fiber mesh is covered up. Okay guys, our second coat of the amazing quick coat is dry and I'm going to call foul on this. It was my fault. I did not bring enough tint to the job site to tint our second layer of epoxy opaque enough. So, our blue tape is ghosting through. Normally, we tint this more opaque and we don't have to do the step that we're fixing to do, which is to paint the undercoat. So, our undercoat is dry and we've moved the panel outside because we're going to be doing a lot of spray paint and it's just going to be so much nicer doing it outside. This is all background noise.
All right, so don't try to make it beautiful, but what I want you to do first is we've got our little shopping bag. If you use this and it has ink on it, make sure you turn your bag inside out because you don't want that ink. I've already done, y'all. You don't want that ink to transpose onto your finish. Then you're going to hold it like this, okay? And you're just going to kind of take your finger and you're going to kind of push it into your palm and make like a little rose. There you go. So, what we want is texture on the face. We don't want it to be super flat. We don't want to do this hard because as soon as we do hard, see how flat it makes our bag? We don't want to do that. So, we'll cut, we'll continually fluff up our bag. We're going to do all different colors at the same time. It's no big deal. We're going to be layering and layering and layering. Do we change bags whenever we change colors? Nope. You just keep adding on top of the same bag. Actually, as the bag gets more saturated with paint, it gives you a little better design. So, I kind of like that. Make sure you shake your cans. Now, instead of spraying from back here, we're going to spray very close to our bag and then you're just going to start tapping and you're just barely tapping. Don't fret. This is just background noise.
Okay, so as we are going around and we're tapping our colors in, sometimes if you step back, you'll see areas that may catch your eye that may be a little bit too dark or you have, it's too flat. What you can do is then come back in with a very, very light color. In this case, I'm doing heirloom white and I'm going to address this spot right here because to me, it just looks really big, dark, and bulky. I'm going to come in over here and I'm going to tap and I'm going to almost bury that dark spot with some lighter colors. And that's a pro tip. Okay.
The panels are painted with all of the colors. We've allowed the colors to to dry. We moved them back inside and we're going to get ready to do our epoxy work. So, what we're going to do is we're going to come over with the art coat, 3 ounces per square foot. We'll mix it up and then we're going to come in with two different colors of spray paint. The homeowner has, uh, some blacks and browns in the bathroom. So, we're going to kind of fog with a black and a dark walnut.
All right guys, you can most definitely use a trowel to spread out your epoxy. I really like using my hands because I can feel if I have surface tension and where I have thin areas. Like right here, I can bring some of the heavier area over. And with my hand, I can feel where it's really thick and where it's thin. But you can most definitely roll it out with a trowel. You can use a roller if you want.
All right, so everything's spread out and I'm, I'm going to torch really quickly to get any bubbles. And I actually have plenty of working time with this because I do want my epoxy to set up just a little bit before I go to the next step, which is to fog and fracture. By letting the epoxy set up just a little bit, it's not as fluid, it's not going to move as much, and I get a much prettier fractured design.
Okay, so it's super important to have everything ready when you get ready to do the fracturing because you don't want your spray paint to sit on the surface for very long before you hit it with the alcohol because then you don't get that fracturing. Also, take care of your lungs. Wear a mask when you do your spray paint. You want to be able to see some of your design through. You don't want it all to be super opaque. You want it to be some really heavy and some to be light. Now, I don't want to do my whole panel at one time because that's too long for the paint to sit on there. All right, we got that. Come back big drops first, then come back with your smaller drops. I'm barely squeezing now. Don't make a judgment call right off the bat. You have to allow your epoxy to kind of, uh, play and meld and then you can always come back and refracture. You can't take it away. So, we'll allow it to kind of do its thing. Because this panel is so large, I don't want to start right where I stopped because I have alcohol sitting on top of this epoxy and I don't want to put spray paint on top of alcohol. So, I'm going to move down and then I'm going to move together.
All right, so it's been 12 hours since we did our color coat. Now, at 12 hours, our surface is still a bit tacky. It feels like the back side of blue tape. And the reason we want to go ahead and flood at this point is because we've got paint now sitting on the surface. If I were to let this dry completely, I would then have to sand it before I did my flood coat. If I sand with that spray paint sitting on top, there is a possibility that I could scratch it and then you can see those scratches ghost through my flood coat. So, this is at a perfect timing for us to do the flood coat. We don't have to sand. It's going to give us a chemical bond and then we'll be ready to install in 24 hours.
All right, it's been 24 hours. Our flood coat is dry. We'll take the panels out, we'll sand the bottom, make sure it's nice and smooth, and then we'll do our install.
All right, so we're ready to install the panels. I'm going to go ahead and silicone the wall because it's so big, I can't get behind there to put the silicone with the wall in here. So, it's going to be an easier fit. Looking good, looking good. It's like a champ. Get at the bottom. Yeah, look. Boom, boom, chakalaka. One down, two to go.
All right, we're ready to punch the holes that we taped up for the faucet and the shower head. We're going to use the hole that I've already drilled out as a guide. Um, when Josh talked to me about all of the things that epoxy does, the durability and being able to pick colors and how you can make it look like other things like stone and all that stuff, we started researching and I just fell in love being able to customize to the way that I want it to look. And I've been super impressed by the way you have given me your colors you wanted to be able to incorporate and you couldn't do that if you just went and bought a slab. Correct. Exactly. All right, yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, we just had so many more design options. I mean, we could get the exact colors that we were looking for and at a fraction of the cost of real stone. So, why pay such high prices for various types of stone and not get the exact color and look that we were wanting?
All right guys, well, I can't wait for you to see how this all turns out. So, stay tuned and follow along.