This pier and beam shower replacement project was in the neat old Tarrytown neighborhood just west of downtown Austin, TX. The bungalow home was just up the road from the Deep Eddy pool, on a street full of repeatedly renovated 1930s homes with more character than an Oscar-winning supporting actor. Its last makeover was sometime in the 1990s when bought by a kinda famous regional musician (who apparently liked to sleep really late what with the blackout blinds that the new owners described inheriting in the deal).
Despite the skylight, this bathroom was dark and dreary. And the wall tile grout was permanently mouldy, which is a sign of bad waterproofing. And the tile shower base was definitely leaking. Everything had to go.
Here’s the thing with renovating an old pier and beam bathroom. Plan on gutting everything to the studs. Every vintage home is like a box of chocolates with a lost lid. You never know what you’re gonna get from the demo, so just plan on ripping everything to the studs.
The good news for a pier and beam foundation home is that you can crawl underneath the bathroom subfloor to see the drain plumbing and examine the floor framing. That’s how it was easy to determine that the shower base was leaking even before demo.
The Renovation Plan
The new homeowners wanted a new shower that would be bright and watertight. And they wanted a bathroom that would pay homage to the 1930s art deco heritage of their vintage bungalow home. And they wanted all of this on a budget. Fortunately for them, renovating a pier and beam bathroom is usually easier than redoing a bathroom on concrete slab. Making a bright tile shower bath on a budget is easy with faux marble porcelain ceramic tile and modern waterproofing materials.
So here was the reno plan:
- Demo everything to the studs
- Repair any structural problems and reframe for a whole new design
- Replumb for a new double shower setup
- Waterproof for a lifetime leak-free guarantee
- Install tile and grout
- Install all new finish fixtures
Since this was a vintage home, there were sure to be some suprises along the way. But were any of these terminal? Read on to find out!
Step ONE: demo to the “studs”
Tearing into a vintage bungalow always guarantees uncovering vintage things like shiplap framing underneath the drywall. The more dissapointing reveal on this project was the badly done “modern” shower base waterproofing.
The shower base was installed with a flexible PVC vinyl liner underneath a concrete deckmud layer. This is a very traditional way to waterproof a tile shower install. It is also a type of waterproofing that’s very prone to failure especially on pier and beam foundations. The only thing that saved this pier and beam foundation from major structural water damage was the massive concrete slab that’d been slapped on top of it.
The dryrot fungus layer was a bit grody, but that’s the benefit of going to the studs in a bathroom remodel. Everything can dry out completely before rebuilding. And a full demo will uncover everything that needs to be rebuilt.
Step TWO: repair and reframe
This demo revealed rough 1x8in shiplap siding underneath the bathroom surface walls. The bad news? This meant reframing the walls for new plumbing and niche insets would be extra work. The good news? There’s no need to demo vintage lumber backing in an old home remodel so long as it’s in great shape. But you will have to cut through it to run new plumbing and wiring for a full bath remodel.
This shiplap wood was in great shape. The shiplap wall boards dated from the home’s origional construction in the 1930s. Depression -era homebuilders had to be creative, becuase they had to build homes on the cheap. So it was common to use leftover exterior siding boards to ‘finish’ interior walls. This bathroom had origionally been a bedroom or nursery room, with wood finish walls likely covered with tacked-on burlap.
The even better news? Redoing a pier and beam subfloor for a crack-free shower replacement install is almost never a big problem. Foundation carpentry is almost always easy in a pier and beam home with just a curcular saw, added 2×6 floor joist beams, and replacement subflooring.
Usually you would want to preserve origional hardwood flooring at all costs. But this oak bathroom floor had seen too much abuse over nearly 100 years to be refinishable. Cutting through the surface flooring made it easy to reinforce the floor joist framing. It also made the drain replumbing easy, which is a feature of any pier and beam shower replacement project. Patching the subfloor cutouts takes just basic carpentry skills.
PRO TIP: There is no need to replace origional hardwood flooring or to rip out legacy shiplap wall siding so long as it’s structurally sound and level enough for surface drywall and tile finishes. For example, any pier and beam subfloor that’s at least 3/4-in thick is fine for tile install with a proper crack prevention membrane for added peace of mind.
Step THREE: replumbing
Replumbing is also almost always easy on a pier and beam foundation. You can either crawl underneath the house or simply cut through the subfloor for easy access to drain lines. These folks needed to move both the shower and toilet drains for their new bathroom design. This can take a week of difficult jackhammering for a concrete foundation. But I was able to completely redo the drain plumbing on this wood foundation in just two days.
The clients chose to replumb for a dual his/hers shower design with lots of inset niche space. This would make maximum use of the 8-ft wide shower space.
Step FOUR: waterproofing
My preferred shower waterproofing method uses Kerdi fabric for the shower base and RedGard over concrete backerboard for the shower walls. This puts a continuous waterproofing layer directly underneath the entire surface tile surface. Here are pics of the waterproofing install process, starting with fashioning a properly sloped shower floor with concrete deckmud.
PRO TIP: Don’t install a concrete deck mud shower base directly on a wooden subfloor with no reinforcement. Staple a layer of plastic onto the subfloor first, and use wire mesh for added concrete strength. This will ensure that the deckmud concrete layer fully cures (the plastic will keep moisture from wicking away into the wood subfloor). And it will ensure a crack-free lifetime guarantee (the wire mesh will act like rebar and the plastic will decouple the shower base concrete from any future subfloor movement).
You also want to use a decoupling membrane between floor tile and a wooden subfloor, especially in an old pier and beam home prone to some shifting. The conventional choice is Schulter Ditra or similar. But these folks wanted to minimize height gain between the new bathroom tile floor and the existing hardwood flooring in the adjacent bedroom.
So here’s ANOTHER PRO TIP: Kerdi waterproofing fabric also works as a decoupling membrane. You can use it for tile installations over wooden subfloors for guaranteed crack prevention.
Step FIVE: tile and grout
These folks wanted a bright bathroom makeover, and also wanted to pay homage to the art deco age of their 1930s vintage home. However they also wanted to keep costs down. And they needed a bathroom that would be easy to clean and maintain.
The solution? Inexpensive large format ceramic tile designed to look like natural marble. Real natural stone marble shower tile requires daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance to keep it looking good. Marble is a very porous stone, so it easily absorbs soap residue and shows hard water scale. And Austin, TX, has really hard water. Large format marble tile is also pricey, and it cracks very easily. All of these things make real marble tile a not great choice for a pier and beam foundation bathroom for a family with kids. Ceramic tile is inexpensive and easy to keep clean.
Precise installation is the trick to making any tile installation look classy. Tight 1/8-in grout lines and perfect balanced symmetry is what classed up this tile install. And carefull preplanning is what made it possible.
Using this bright large format tile throughout the whole room made the space feel larger than the actual room dimensions. This also took full advantage of the skylight natural light. PRO TIP: A full measure whole bathroom renovation is often better than trying to patch and partially fix.
Step SIX: finish fixtures
These clients were smart shoppers. They found a closeout double vanity cabinet for cheap, and got an inexpensive marble remnant countertop custom made by Toluca Granite for less than anything they could have sourced anywhere else.
ANOTHER PRO TIP: Be sure to measure carefully when installing a prefab vanity in an old 1930s bungalow. Make sure it will fit through the doorways and also make tight turns in narrow hallways. You will have to haul it in all the way from the driveway.
The FINISH: lighter and brighter!
This pier and beam shower replacement totally transformed the clients’ bungalow home. Remember that the previous leaky shower remodel was a dark and dank 1980s mess.
The bathroom now is a bright, watertight, easy to keep clean delight. The faux marble tile, actual marble vanity top, and sleek chrome fixtures all make this bathroom the 1930s art deco design that this vintage bungalow wanted. And the large practically designed shower niches (two for his and hers storage, and an extra for leg shaving and foot washing convenience) made this shower renovation practically usable too!
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