[Andy Graves]

Great detail.

Is this entire system going to be floating in the shower opening and only siliconed to the studs?

I have hear some fabricators have trouble with the cove breaking.

[John Christensen]

Posted By John Christensen on 19 Aug 2011 03:57 PM
Here it comes people.   Look away if you are bored with pictures and details.

This is the form for thermoforming the floor.  It has a 5/16″ pqr ft. slope to the drain.  The outside perimiter of the form is spaced away from the floor so that I can make the SS pieces slightly oversized.  I also make the perimiter pieces of the mold 1/2″ higher than the floor of the mold so when I apply the vacuum blanket it would NOT (EDIT) curl down the edges.

I did not proof this post well.  I have added the work not into the text.

Johnny C

[John Christensen]

Ready for some more?

The last part of the pan assembly was adding reinforcement at the cove transition area and the joint where the walls would seam to the pan.  I didn’t get a photo of that but this cross section drawing will give you the idea.

The cove detail was done with the single rabbet technique.  I thought that it would be advisable to add reinforcement there.

Because the the wall sections would be to large to handle, I set the lower section of the walls in place, prior to fabrication of the whole wall, leaving a 3/8″ gap.  This was to allow me to do a mirror cut on the entire seam includiing the step up to the seat.  I secured them into position with spanners using hot melt.  The spanners have a relief cut in them for the router bit to pass.

This is the back side of the wall.  I set up straight edges above the seat and to the left of the vertical seam so that I could run a 1/2″ bit through startiing at the far right and stopping at the bottom corner.  Then I set up a straight edge below the bottom seam and stopped the router at the tight corner.  With care you can get the stopping points to be very close.  The inside corners needed to be hand fit with a sanding block to fit the radius of the cut made by the router bit at the outside corners. 

Once all the bottom sections of the walls had been fit to the pan I completed fabricating the walls.  The space for the walls was templated so that the walls when finished would match in size and squareness to the space they were to be installed.  I needed to have a verticle site seam on each wall.  I made each section 1/2″ wider than needed and then ran a 1/2″ bit through the seam location to cut the panels and create the perfect seam.

I didn’t want any of my site seams to be at the coved corners.  I made all the wall seams at least 6″ from the corners. 

The first piece is dry fit to the pan.  All wall seams have a seam stap on them also. The coves on the walls were done with the double rabbet technique.  That was in order to have overlapping joints in the cove detail.  I believe this will be enough reinforcement at the verticle wall coves.  In this photo the pan does not have the reinforcement pieces added yet.

This is the second piece in the dry fit.

All the walls are now dry fit.  I wanted to dry fit the walls before adding the reinforcement to the pan just to be sure that they would sit flush or even slight ly less than flush at the apron around the pan.  If the walls were even the slightest bit larger it would be impossible to install them after the reinforcement was in place.

Next up, installation day.

Johnny C

[Karl Crooks]

John you are a TRUE craftsman !

WOW great work man !!!!

[Andy Graves]

I think I would hire you to do my shower instead of me. That looks like a ton of work.

Post these series of pictures on your website, they are truly remarkable.

[John Christensen]

Posted By Karl Crooks on 24 Aug 2011 08:43 AM
John you are a TRUE craftsman !

WOW great work man !!!!

Thanks, Karl.  I appreciate that.  Obviously I like the feedback, but also I want others to get inspired and attempt what they thought they couldn’t do.

I am not perfect and I had a few bobbles.  But it is SS and it is fixable. (phew).

Johnny C

[John Christensen]

Posted By Andy Graves on 24 Aug 2011 11:19 AM
I think I would hire you to do my shower instead of me. That looks like a ton of work.

Post these series of pictures on your website, they are truly remarkable.

You are right Andy, it is a bunch of work.  The corner seat joining to the walls with a site seam had me scratching my head for days.

I thought that I would try this approach on my own shower to get a real feel for what was involved before I committed to offering it to a customer.

Johnny C

[John Christensen]

Now to really add the WOW factor to the shower I added two integral soap/shampoo caddy’.  His and hers, ya know?  Hers was  W12-3/4″ x H17″.  Mine was W8″ x H17-3/4″.

I used a 1/2″ core box bit and slotted jig that was cut as a ramp to rout the taperede grooves.  I was surprised that it really didn’t leave much of a line in the center of the grooves.

I dry fit and clamped all the parts together, aligning all the coves as flush as possible.  After sanding the back of the parts completely flush, I used 1/8″ wide pieces of SS to make small overlapping alignment fingers.  These were super glued on opposing sides of the joints to assist with aligng all the parts while gluing.  I used 1/8″ pieces so that they would break off easily after gluing.  These pieces act just like the alignment fingers on an expandable dining table.

You may have noticed in the first photo what appeared to be cellophane tape.  I applied this at all the seams and trimmed it flush prior to gluing together.  Once all the parts were glued together I used a gloved finger to thin down the glue squeeze out to just a thin film.  When it was soft cured I pealed the tape off.  The result was a minimal glue line to finish off.

The minimal glue line and any parts that weren’t quite perfectly flush was easy to scrape down with a scraper.  (Standard cabinet scraper cut in half at an angle and rounded on the corners).          

I did as much finish sanding as possible before gluing to the wall panel.  It was much easier to sand when I could hold it on the table and spin it around as needed as opposed to sanding it after it was installed in the center of a panel.

The small caddy was simply glued to the back of the wall panel.  Because the sides of the caddy is angled, I could run it through the tablesaw (backside down) to create a narrow ledge.  I used clamping blocks hot melted to the back of the panel and wedges to gain pressure against the narrow ledge.

After the adhesive was set I used a velvet guide trim bit to trim it out on the front side.  this wouldn’t make it flush of course because of all the angles.  I did some experimenting and finally used a 3/8″ standard flush trim bit in my laminate router.  I used it free hand so that I could visually match the angle of the sides and the grooves.  It worked pretty darn good and left minimal sanding.

For the large caddy (hers).  I decided to try mounting it like a bevel plug or a bevel mounted sink.  For the future I can use this and make a glacier white (or other color) caddy and insert it into a contrasting color panel leaving a 1″ border around the caddy.  I could also install a caddy after the fact in a pre existing shower wall.

I made these hold down clamps that are hot melted to the wall panel.  These help make sure that the bevel seam is tight everywhere.

Sand it flush and move on to finish sanding.  

Geeze.  When am I gonna get this shower installed?

Johnny C

[Un-Authorized]

Andy:

Please kick Johnny off the fabnet.

Thanks,

Joe

[Andy Graves]

Your work makes me rethink my ability to make cool stuff. That soap caddy is amazing. Got a question, why didn’t you just glue the caddy to the back of the panel and trim to the opening? Just curious.

[John Christensen]

Posted By Andy Graves on 24 Aug 2011 10:28 PM
Your work makes me rethink my ability to make cool stuff. That soap caddy is amazing. Got a question, why didn’t you just glue the caddy to the back of the panel and trim to the opening? Just curious.

Andy:

That is exactly how I did the smaller one, and have always done them up until now.  The larger one I wanted to try the bevel mount for a couple of reasons.

   1.  By bevel mounting, I could conceivably offer these to anyone who may like to use it in their shower fabrication/installation project.  The flush trimming of the caddy to the panel can be a bit tricky due to the various angles.  The bevel mount approach elliminates that step from an installation standpoint.  (no cost discussion here)

   2.  When I bevel mount the caddy I can completely finish sand the caddy while it is on the table and easy to maneuver around.  If The caddy is mounted in a large panel, it can be backbreaking to lean over the panel to get good access to do the sanding.

   3.  With good planning, the cut out area can provide for material to make the top bottom and shelf, because you can cut it out ahead of time.

Johnny C

[Un-Authorized]

I’ve got a shower job coming up in my remodled master bath. Nothing like this of course. I’ll never get to it before school starts. I laid floor tile today.
That is all for now. I’m taking notes Johnny.

Joe

[Steve Mehan]

Johnny, I applaud your talents, very inspirational. You have deffinetly thought out this project, (the support behind the base cove is a great addition). I enjoyed everyones compliments on your project. Great work…

[John Christensen]

Thanks, Steve, and all others who have been following.

Install comming soon.

Johnny C

[Un-Authorized]

Johnny:

I’ve always been of the opinion that it is better to bring your walls to your pan and walls than bringing your pan and walls to your walls. In other words, it’s a lot easier/safer to shim the existing walls to your pan and plumb walls than it is to hope/pray that the base and walls you built will fit.

Joe

[Author]

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