First things first. When buying a church and converting it to your home you will quickly realize churches do NOT come with showers and/or laundry rooms (we’ll get to that later).

We had to make all our decisions based on our budget. Since “The Great Move” just happened and we’re feeling it financially, we did prepare ahead of time. We knew if we busted up the ground in any bathroom and in any way to install a permanent shower that would be a lot of time and labor and materials. Ultimately a lot of money. The best way to not break the bank and have a semi-normal shower is to stay above ground, for now. This shower is to be a semi-temporary shower for us to function properly daily. In the future we will then probably combine both the Womens and Mens bathrooms to make one big master bathroom equipped with a walk in Roman style tub and rain show. For now, still on a budget, we set out to find a basement pop-up style shower.

Before we moved we found a brand new DuraStall basement shower at a local Habitat for Humanity in Ohio for 50 bucks! What a deal!

With the new basement shower on hand in New Mexico all we needed was a platform to lift up the shower tall enough to install a p-trap and vent so we don't get those nasty sewer smells. This is normally the part of the plumbing that is buried and we would have had to break up the cement under the shower costing us a lot of money, but first we needed to drain the existing toilet and remove the tank and base.

Once the whole toilet was drained and removed we were left with a 4” drain pipe in the floor. This 4” drain pipe is where we will connect our p-trap and vent system. In order to connect our 4” drain pipe to our shower with a p-trap and vent we had to reduce it down to a 2” pipe. The system we created was as follows: 2” reducer from 4” floor drain pipe to a 2” inline vent. That vent is immediately followed up by the p-trap and quickly turned into an 18” vertical 2” pipe that will fit directly into the 2” drain in the shower floor.

Back to the platform, we chose to go with cinder blocks to lift the basement shower high enough to install the p-trap. The cinder blocks will be strong enough to hold the weight of the shower as well as the person in the shower without breaking underweight. Two (2) - 8” x 8” x 16” stacked on top of each other creates a height tall enough to house our p-trap and vent system we will create. We lined the four corners of the shower floor with this method. Two stacked cinder blocker in each corner. This left a perfect open center for the plumbing to connect to the shower.

A sheet of plywood was used as a barrier between our shower and cinder blocks. This allowed for the platform to become more rigid and will allow it to hold more weight. Once the plywood was cut and set in place we sunk mason screws through the plywood into the cinder blocks to stabilize the platform and to keep the cinder blocks from moving under the platform. This allowed the platform to be as sturdy as possible with someone standing and moving in the shower.

We then screwed the shower platform to the plywood base on the outside of the base so no holes were drilled inside the basin area that could leak later. The entire shower was assembled on the floor and then bolted into place on the already installed shower floor.

The hot and cold water supply was pulled directly from the water heater and luckily for us the boiler room and bathroom share a wall so we did not have to travel far with our water supply. We tapped into the hot and cold water from the water heater with a T elbow and added a PEX water line clamp system. Pex clamps and hoses are very user friendly and easy to use! The water supply ran through the wall from one room to the other and connected directly to the hot and cold valves on the back side of the shower. (This water supply also T’d off and went to our washer)

The base step of the shower jetted out two bricks wide (16” wide) which gave us a nice stepping area when we stepped out of the shower, but the first step below was only one brick wide and seemed too narrow for the first step up or down. We decided to add another brick to the base on the first step widening that step which now becomes two bricks wide (16”). The steps to the shower are now 16” deep which is a nice stepping area without filling like too narrow of a step.

2 mil plastic was laid over the plywood that was used for the base and steps of the shower. We adhered the plastic to the plywood with spray glue and used a nail gun to keep the plastic in place. I used an 18 ga nail gun with a 1” brad nail.

On top of the plastic we nailed some extra carpet we had to the plywood with the same size nails to keep the carpet in place so that no one trips climbing the two stairs to get in or out of the shower.

Since we built the shower up to now it has been about two months. We have not encountered any problems with our shower base, water supply, drain, etc except that we have low water pressure. I will change out the ½’ PEX water line we added to ¾” soon to see if that will help our water pressure.

Still a lot more to do with this shower area but it serves its purpose for us, for now!

Until next time!

Toilet to Shower