A fitting end to a weekend of hard work

I made quite a bit more progress today on reconstruction. I started the morning with a trip to Menards to pick up additional materials to keep these efforts on track, mainly the short length of pipe I needed to tie in the shower drain. I patched in the last section of floor near the bathroom door as my first course of action:

Then, I measured, cut, adjusted, and aligned the drain pipe for the shower and glued the P-trap in place. This was a bit hard-fought at times, for I had to adjust the notch in the sistered joist a little to provide better clearance for the fitting. I glued on the adapter to fit the 2" pipe that the shower drain will use.

I hadn't previously pressure tested my soldered joints, so I tied in with my air compressor and pressurized the supply lines. I found I had an issue with one of my sweated joints. It was quickly fixed and retested successfully.

After lunch, I reframed part of the west wall of the shower area to support the new shower niche.

Then, after steeling myself with a snack, I moved ahead to put the shower base in place. Before moving the shower base into place, I installed the shower drain adapter. I also installed some steel strips on the subfloor to make it easier to slide the shower base in place and to provide more reliable support, something the base won't sink into over time.

With the use of some "words of power," I managed to get the base in place by myself. Hooray! It's level, installed solidly, and looks great. We selected a Kohler cast-iron base for its durability, lower likelihood of leaking, and ease of cleaning.

Once the shower base was installed, I moved on to install GoBoard tile backer on the walls.

We used GoBoard in the other bathroom last year. Since this bathroom uses a standard 60" alcove for the shower, the 36" x 60" pieces are easy to install with few seams. The three pieces above took about 30 minutes to install. I installed two more pieces on the end with the shower valve before calling it a night.

I have a little framing work to do on the other end (to support the GoBoard and the shower door). 

My progress will be a little slower now that I'm back to regular work schedule on Mondy. I'm happy that I was able to accomplish so much over the last six days. That we are in reconstruction mode already is pretty amazing by my account. I have plenty of drywall work ahead, a little more framing to finish up for the medicine cabinet, plus finish work on the vanity cabinet. The good news is many of these tasks have significant dwell time: for a room this small, many tasks can be completed in an hour, but then have 24+ hours dwell time while things cure or dry.