Back in the Shower Again
Oct. 13th, 2025 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerAfter literal years of us leaving it unused I feel like there should be a powerful rock riff to herald the reopening of the shower in our main bathroom. Maybe something from Aerosmith?
1. We renovated this shower and had the new tiles and handheld plumbing put in 15 years ago. The contractor didn't do a great job on the grout work, though. The grout chipped and cracked in a few places after several years. Also, mold developed until one of the lines of caulk.
2. We decided 6-7 years ago that we should stop using the shower until we could fix the grout and caulk. We considered hiring a pro again to fix it but also figured it was a DIY-able job if we did some research. Unfortunately...
3. We put off making time to do the research / do the work for several years. During this time we simply used the other shower in our house.
4. Hawk finally got sick of staring at it and followed up on watching some of the how-to videos I bookmarked last year. She bought the materials to patch the grout and redo the caulk. She did this late last month.
5. We started using the shower again. Hooray! But we quickly discovered a new problem. The shower head leaked a lot when we used it.
6. No problem fixing a leaky shower head. We just bought a new one! Well, I would have preferred to fix the old shower head by replacing a washer in it, a fix that would have cost pennies instead of $60, but that wasn't possible. The shower head was a sealed unit, preventing DIY repair. Ah, the disposable economy! We screwed on the new shower head and cord (seen in the photo above/right) and... discovered another problem.
7. The shower head leaked even when the water was turned off. I noticed this when I heard the drip... drip... drip... all night long. Alas the problem here was not the shower head but the valve in the plumbing. The valve mixer/cartridge pieces would need to be replaced.
8. I did first try disassembling, cleaning, and re-lubricating the parts in the valve, in case (like with the shower head) the problem was just a washer that had dried out too much during the years it was left unused. I cleaned it out as best I could, but the leak persisted. So we ordered replacement parts, about an $80 cost including tax, and waited several days for them to be shipped.
9. While we were waiting for the plumbing parts to arrive Hawk decided it was time to replace the mounting rod for the shower, too. That's the vertical bar and the swivel mount the hand-held piece slots in (in the photo above). Those pieces arrived. We removed the old rod, plugged two of the bolt holes in the tile (the new rod uses 2 mounting holes while the old one used 4), and mounted up the new rod.
10. Finally, last Thursday, we replaced the components inside the valve. Online videos helped enormously with this, giving us the confidence to DIY it without concern that we'd break something. We bolted it all back up, did a pressure test, adjusted the temperature limiter, et voila! We're baaaack in the shower again!
🎵 I'm baaaackSo, what's the deal with the shower? Well, first here's a picture of what it looks like now, and then a (not-so) brief history of how we got to this point:
I'm back in the shower again
I'm baaaack
I'm back in the shower again 🎵
1. We renovated this shower and had the new tiles and handheld plumbing put in 15 years ago. The contractor didn't do a great job on the grout work, though. The grout chipped and cracked in a few places after several years. Also, mold developed until one of the lines of caulk.2. We decided 6-7 years ago that we should stop using the shower until we could fix the grout and caulk. We considered hiring a pro again to fix it but also figured it was a DIY-able job if we did some research. Unfortunately...
3. We put off making time to do the research / do the work for several years. During this time we simply used the other shower in our house.
4. Hawk finally got sick of staring at it and followed up on watching some of the how-to videos I bookmarked last year. She bought the materials to patch the grout and redo the caulk. She did this late last month.
5. We started using the shower again. Hooray! But we quickly discovered a new problem. The shower head leaked a lot when we used it.
6. No problem fixing a leaky shower head. We just bought a new one! Well, I would have preferred to fix the old shower head by replacing a washer in it, a fix that would have cost pennies instead of $60, but that wasn't possible. The shower head was a sealed unit, preventing DIY repair. Ah, the disposable economy! We screwed on the new shower head and cord (seen in the photo above/right) and... discovered another problem.
7. The shower head leaked even when the water was turned off. I noticed this when I heard the drip... drip... drip... all night long. Alas the problem here was not the shower head but the valve in the plumbing. The valve mixer/cartridge pieces would need to be replaced.
8. I did first try disassembling, cleaning, and re-lubricating the parts in the valve, in case (like with the shower head) the problem was just a washer that had dried out too much during the years it was left unused. I cleaned it out as best I could, but the leak persisted. So we ordered replacement parts, about an $80 cost including tax, and waited several days for them to be shipped.
9. While we were waiting for the plumbing parts to arrive Hawk decided it was time to replace the mounting rod for the shower, too. That's the vertical bar and the swivel mount the hand-held piece slots in (in the photo above). Those pieces arrived. We removed the old rod, plugged two of the bolt holes in the tile (the new rod uses 2 mounting holes while the old one used 4), and mounted up the new rod.
10. Finally, last Thursday, we replaced the components inside the valve. Online videos helped enormously with this, giving us the confidence to DIY it without concern that we'd break something. We bolted it all back up, did a pressure test, adjusted the temperature limiter, et voila! We're baaaack in the shower again!
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