When we bought our house, it was a 3 bedroom, 1 bath house. Actually, I guess you could consider it a 3/1.5 since there is an outhouse in the courtyard (which we thankfully never have to use). So one of the very first projects we had our contractors work on was adding a bathroom with a shower (the original bath only has a monster-sized tub) in one of the tiny bedrooms.

The finished result was really nice and we were happy with things — but always a bit concerned about the construction since a bathroom on the upper floors of your house can destroy things if it’s not well constructed.  You can read the whole before and after of the bathroom here.

For about 5 years, we used our lovely shower on a daily basis, and noticed that it wasn’t quite perfect, but it was doing well. Because the floor was uneven and old (our house was built around 1834), the beams move and give a bit when you walk around. In most circumstances, that wouldn’t be a big deal. But when it’s in a shower, it can become a big issue.

Every couple of months, we found ourselves needing to recaulk around the base of the shower, because the shower pan was separating from the wall tile. This then caused a bit of water to drip down under the shower pan and to the ceiling and floor below. Because of the beam construction of our house, we actually noticed it fairly quickly (thankfully) and would add more caulk. But that’s really only a temporary solution.

At one point a year or so ago, we had some bathroom contractor/plumbers out here because we noticed that the leak seemed to be getting worse. (BTW, for trusted plumbers near the Rosebay area, visit them: http://www.plumberrosebay.com.au.) The shelf you see above with the bath products on it was actually built at the wrong angle, so it trapped water instead of it flowing off. But the bath guys had no real solutions to offer us (as they rarely do), and they caulked everything up and went along their merry way.

So about 6 or 7 long months ago, Stefan was getting into the shower one very early morning…and he nearly broke. We were so concerned with the shower pan that we barely noticed that the step we used every day to get in and out of the shower was totally disintegrating. I mean we knew it had a few issues, because we’d had to re-grout it a few months before, but we didn’t fully comprehend the severity of things.

You see, the contractor that built this was pretty good at making things look nice, but he was also good at cutting corners and not fully thinking things through. So, he built a step from water-resistant drywall and a couple of 2×4’s. This might have sufficed if we weren’t stepping in nearly the same place every day — and if he’d put some support beams where we actually step.

Now you might be thinking to yourself right now — wait, did they do this bathroom renovation 6 or 7 months ago? And she’s just getting around to writing about it?

Sadly no. One of our neighbors is a general contractor. He’s done some other work for us and we asked him to come do this job as well. So after about a month of waiting, he finally came over to look at the shower and the water damage downstairs. “No problem, piece  of cake,” he says. “I will drop off a bid.”

One month passes.

Two months pass.

And no bid.

I see him on the street a few times in between, I ask what’s going on –did he forget about us?

Half-blank stare on his face and then the light flicks on. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll bring a bid over….” Blah. Blah. Blah. So I basically just say listen, we don’t care as long as you get started. He tells me he will have to work up a bid again but he should be able to start in a couple of weeks.

Another month passes. No sign of him.

Why not just hire someone else, you ask? Great question. Except that quality workers are hard to find here. Even though they are often highly skilled here in Germany due to their training, they are not necessarily competent. Their greatest asset is often being able to tell you how poorly the job was done before (which is pretty darn obvious if your shower is leaking water down to the floor below) but they cannot seem to come up with a suggestion about how to actually fix things. And actually finding someone willing to do a smaller job like ours is really not that easy. Plus, this renovation was apparently in a bit of a grey area because plumbers didn’t want to touch it, general contractors found the job too small…and who else does that really leave?

So eventually Stefan gets the name of another contractor from someone he works with and we give him a call. He makes an appointment to come out 2 weeks later just to look at it. About a month after that, we finally tie him down long enough to send his guys over and start the job. At this point, we’ve not been able to shower standing up for 6-7 months (although we could run over to the guest house in the morning if it wasn’t so chilly) but we sure are thrilled these guys are starting.

The crew of two guys and the boss show up at 8am Friday morning (the 21st) and they size things up, then the boss leaves and the guys start completely destroying our bathroom. I mean they did it in a neat, organized way. But I was still pretty freaked out.

Once they had the tile off the step, it was pretty clear why it never would have held up long term. I think it may have been two layers of drywall, but that hole you see is right where we step to get in the shower (the small side is the only access point since the other longer side has a glass wall). But with no beams there at all, the floor just collapsed.

Now that part was disappointing. I mean the guy should have run at least a few more 2x4s through there and thought about where we’d be stepping in. Or maybe we should have been questioning his actions more — but this was also the first bathroom we’d built so we were trusting his judgement and knowledge.

But then it just got downright scary.

This was the scene under the shower pan. Water damage galore. I’m just thankful that we didn’t fall through the floor while showering in there at some point. Not a pretty picture at all.

So the guys removed the damaged and rotted stuff, and then they started to rebuild the floor. We told them it needed to be sturdy and should essentially not move at all when we stepped in there. So they didn’t mess around. First they used a thick concrete to fill in the area which had rotted out.

Normally in the US, you can get something similar to drywall that is concrete and it will stay in place for the rest of eternity. But there’s nothing like that available here (although they make concrete in every other imaginable shape) so these guys used a whole bunch of leveling concrete to fill out the rest of the hole once the thicker stuff was set.

At the same time, one of the guys was also working on the step in wall and re-tiling it. They brought it up higher and angled so that the water runs off — the way it should have been done the first time.

I was pretty impressed with their efficiency. The destruction and halfway rebuild took them about 6 hours — and then at 2pm they called it a day. I couldn’t say much because there really wasn’t anything else they could do. But when workers walk out of your house and a good portion of your bathroom is dismantled, you have just a mini panic attack.

They couldn’t give me a clear idea of when they would be coming back on Monday, but they did say they would be here. So when they hadn’t arrived by 10am, we started to get a bit worried. Thankfully, they were just working another job still, trying to finish something up, and it took longer than expected.

Once they arrived at our place, they worked like crazy. In fact, they arrived at about 1pm but they worked until about 7pm. And I can assure you that most contractors do not like to work past 5pm in our experience. Plus these guys really don’t even take breaks.

At any rate, they did finish the job in about 3 days –which is rather what I expected since with tiling and grouting and so on, you have a lot of time constraints. We’ve been there and done that. With the finished product in place, it’s almost as if we have a whole new shower.

And let me just state for the record, that the shower doesn’t move, creak, wobble or jiggle in any way. They constructed the new step from 2-inch thick light concrete stones, and also shimmed up the shower pan with a few of those as well. So basically that thing isn’t going anywhere — unless we each gain about 300 pounds and try to shower together. 😉

Now I just need to work on getting the built up lime and caulk deposits off the glass walls. Anyone have tips for me? 

Do you have your own scary bathroom or home renovation stories? Do share!