Here it is, we actually did it. We built that BLACK AND WHITE subway tile shower you’ve always wanted. Boy, it turned out nicely.
Featuring tons of storage: One large soap niche with a black Schluter shelf, one average size soap niche, 3 black Schluter corner shelves, one black self supporting rectangular shelf near the shower head and one corner shaving shelf for good measure!
That’s a lot of STORAGE and USABLE SPACE.
Top it off with BLACK fixtures, a touch of BLACK tile in the shower floor, black grab bar, a black FLO FX drain cover, black glass panel hardware and the top top BLACK Laticrete Spectra lock PRO, 2 part EPOXY GROUT.
WOW.
That black and white subway tile shower you’ve always wanted: Dallas, GA.
We loved how it turned out and our homeowner did too, with an off-sized white 4 x 12” rectangular subway tile and a black and white basket weave mosaic in the back of the boxes and on the shower floor.
Speaking of our homeowner, they were the best! It was a mutual love fest with appreciation and gratitude all around and these are the type of people that make it fun and make our vocation worth it.
They really treated us TOP NOTCH with lunches, conversation and compliments throughout this 2 week process. In fact, the homeowner helped us with the tear out…lugging out concrete blocks. She is TOUGH!
Before this remodel there was a very unsafe, builder grade shower with subway tile on a shower floor with a considerable pitch, dangerous for the disabled veteran homeowner.
They nailed the design with the help of Cindy over at Tilehouse of Marietta and we built them a functional, long lasting shower.
Now if you’re looking to hire us to do work for you, you probably care most about “How’s it built”?
First, this is mostly an Ardex brand shower. Ardex is a German company that is comparable to Schluter Systems. The board you see on the walls in the prep picture is Ardex brand foam board, which is waterproof throughout with a cementitious outer coating that the tile gets stuck to.
We’ve been using a product by Built with Foam to flatten our walls and that is where the skill is. Jason has gotten to be quite good at fixing wonky framing over the years to get a FLAT and PLUMB substrate to work with. Here’s how we do it:
Once the walls are flattened the backer board goes up. We custom packed out shower pan with Laticrete’s dry pack, which we like the best…
You can see that we use 2” Schluter structural foam to build our curbs. We have more flexibility with the SIZE of the curb and it is more cost effective to get one sheet of the 2” foam and rip down MANY curbs this way.
We waterproofed on top of our pan and curbs and all seams with Ardex sheet membrane, then we FLOOD TESTED our shower for 24 hours and we came back and set our floor. We covered the floor with cardboard and started on our walls.
EVERY SINGLE TILE on this shower was “BACK BUTTERED” and had excellent coverage. Coverage means the thin set ridges behind the tile are COLLAPSED and covering the entire tile.
We sanded all cut edges.
We siliconed all plane changes inside the shower with Laticrete’s Latisil 100% silicone. That’s the good stuff, we have found.
So, you notice a bunch of different products used.
WE SIMPLY USE WHAT WE HAVE FOUND TO BE THE BEST PRODUCTS THROUGH OUR EXPERIENCE.
All of our jobs get a lifetime guarantee from Hamilton Tile that our showers WILL NOT LEAK or degenerate due to product or installer error.
That’s it, this is how we built our shower and we stand behind our work!
Check out the IN PROGRESS photos taken by our awesome homeowner:
The ultimate “BEFORE AND AFTER” I love these so much. Look at that contrast!
The last thing we do is clean the glass installed by Chattahoochee Shower doors of Johns Creek. You read that right, WE CLEAN THE GLASS and after that, this black and white subway tile shower was DELIVERED.
This tile is a 4x12” white Intercermic tile was set with a 1/6” grout joint. The layout worked best with mirrored tile corners. Check out this blog article on the topic of a “mirrored vs. wrapped tile corner”.
The shower floor was a White and Black Basketweave Ceramic Mosaic Tile coupled with a black FloFX drain which is, in our opinion, the best drain on the market. It is a PVC bond flange drain made by a company founded by a tiler. It really shows in the smart design, which seems like it was made by someone who has done a lot of tile!
Notice the drain is NOT CENTERED. We did it like this because the drain position was set without going into more major demolition. The homeowner elected to leave it where it was as not to add to the project.
Here are some closeups of the soap niches. These are edged with Schluter Rondec profiles. In fact, the entire shower was edged with Schluter Rondec profiles. We use profiles because there are less pieces, less grout lines than when you use bullnose tile. It’s a cleaner look, don’t you think?
We used the shower floor tile to spice up the back of the boxes. The big box is 12x28” and the smaller one is 12x 20”. The big one has a black Schluter shelf down the middle. Notice FULL PIECES at the top and bottom of the boxes. We make our boxes custom to accommodate the size of the tile and to allow for bigger pieces, no “L” cuts due to good layout and planning.
These WILL FIT even the BIGGEST soap bottles you have.
The change of planes inside the boxes are silicone, and you can see on this sites how we COMPLETELY waterproof with Ardex 8+9 and Kerdi membrane.
Here we have the finished product, without the glass panel that will stop the water.
How cool is this?!
I must say, when black grout is being used GREAT CARE must be used sustaining consistent grout joint sizes or inconsistencies will be noticeable. That’s why EVERY grout line received a spacer throughout the construction of the shower. We are SUPER CONSCIENTIOUS to grout line consistency. The results were excellent when everything was grouted up.
Check out the VIDEO below:
GROUTED UP by the way, with EPOXY GROUT.
Yup, we mixed one part with another part and made true epoxy grout. Laticrete Spectra Lock Pro.
The stuff is TOUGH and it will last a very long time and you can always clean it back to it’s original color. It’s more money, but you’re NEVER messing with grout again. Many showers get the BOTTOM OF THE BARREL grout and that is why people HATE grout so much!
On an investment like this, something you use everyday, we recommend pulling the trigger for the good stuff and we have a TON of experience putting it in. It’s nothing new for us.
We try to install single piece curb tops because of how much water action the top of a curb gets. This curb top is Quartz from Top South in Marietta, GA.
My word for our business lately is GRATITUDE. We’re so grateful to be where we are and Jason and I talk about it all the time. Most days are pretty awesome for us. We relax and do what we do for great people and we’ve been getting excellent results.
I hope you can see that in this post.
We are at the top of our game professionally, we are young, motivated, skilled and barring any catastrophic unforeseens we are going to keep improving on what we do and keep bringing a great service and product to the people who choose to use us.
THANK YOU to everyone that supports us. I wish you all the best from behind my keyboard. PROSPERITY, PEACE AND JOY to all.
-Ben
