I've had a really hard time finding an article that lays everything out all in one place. I've noticed the how-to articles seem to be a little lacking.. for example how to put up a vapor barrier in your shower: 1. find studs 2. staple plastic on studs

If anyone can point me to an article that goes from beginning to end what needs to happen to redo a shower, that would be awesome. Otherwise, I'm hoping I can get a few pointers from where we are.

we pulled out the soggy drywall that the tile was falling off of and decided to get rid of the shower pan as well.

We ordered a swanstone replacement and didn't even think that our standard sized pan would have the drain in a random not standard spot, but turns out measuring everything is super important and shouldn't be overlooked. we moved the drain.

We put in the shower pan and it has a little flex in a few places, so we tried to do a mortar bed tonight, but it dried way to fast and got really hard really fast. we were able to get in back up with a putty knife, crow bar, and mallet, but it's not an experience we're hoping to repeat. we followed all the directions on the "quick drying" mortar except one. my boyfriend is convinced we need to dump the mortar into the water slowly while mixing and we ended up taking about 10 minutes to mix it although the directions say 1-3 minutes. I think we should just dump it in and mix. I think we added too much air while mixing, he thinks we should have just put in more water than the directions said. any tips? we're going to try again probably wednesday.

next we are going to put up the 6 mil of plastic. i gather it is supposed to go to the top flange of the shower pan. do I start it at the drywall thats above where the tiles go? we have about 2 feet where we left the drywall above where we are tiling. I think we are going to overlap just a very little with the tile. also, what do I need to put around it where the shower valve pokes through?

I think that covers it for right now. we are going to tackle tiling next weekend and I'm sure I'll have more questions.

 

I don't know what you mean by added too much air. More water would slow the process. You might be better off using a complete prefab surround from E L Mustee or someone, instead of trying to do all that tile work.

 

Quick dry mortar is never used to set a pan.
There is no need for a vapor barrier behind tile board. The water proofing is done on the face of it, not behind it. A product like Red guard is used to water proof.
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Grout and tile board are not water proof, why would you want water to flow all the way through the wall?

 

thanks for the replies so far. pulpo, we really want the look of tile and so are going for it. I'm thinking "added too much air" as in dried it out faster by over mixing it and kept exposing it to air.

joecaption: I've thought about redgaurd, but it seems like an unnecessary expense

 

And you would be very wrong in thinking that.
This topic has been discussed thousands of time on this and any DIY site.
May want to check out Johnbridge.com that's all the sites about is tile.
diychatroom.com is another web site to check out. Just go to the search function under tile.
Your a first time DIY, I've been doing this stuff for 40 years. I've seen what works and what fails.