Solid Surface Shower Tray

[jonny round boy]

Part 1 - Design & Planning

Once upon a time (well, a few years ago) I was fortunate to be able to rescue some BIG sheets of solid surface material that had been written off by the manufacturer, and were headed for the skip.

I knew it would come in useful, as we were planning some major work on the house & I wanted to build a bespoke shower tray for our en-suite in the attic room. I'd found a picture somewhere on the internet (so long ago now I can't remember where) of a shower tray with a duckboard area:

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I liked it, and started designing something similar. The space for the en-suite was small, about 2500 long by 800mm wide, and I planned on having the duckboard area in front of the main tray. I'd also planned on making the duckboard itself from some white SS material. The design went through several incarnations, before finally looking something like this:

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The tray was going to be 800x800, with the duckboard area 300x800. The plan was to have a separate waste in this front section, to drain the water away:

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The delay from getting to this 'final' design and actually starting the build ended up being about 3 years, such is the nature of renovating houses on a shoestring budget, whilst you're still living in them! Anyway, we eventually had the roof replaced in September/October last year, and then began working on the internals.

Construction of the shower tray began between Christmas & New Year last year. The first stage was making an MDF template of the tray to ensure it would actually fit in the space intended:

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It was at this stage that I realised that the design with the duckboard simply wasn't going to work. The duckboard area was just too small to be useful, and only got in the way. I decided to do away with this part, but that presented another problem; my girlfriend & I both wanted the glass shower door to be a simple as possible, without any plastic/rubber seals around it. The seals never quite look right, are difficult to keep clean, and end up looking grubby very quickly. Having the door without seals would look far better, but some water was obviously going to escape, and that water would need to be dealt with somehow.

The answer was obvious; build the shower tray without the front section, but keep the 2nd drain & carry the solid surface across the entire floor, effectively creating a 'wetroom' look. So, the tray was re-designed, to incorporate the whole floor, with coved 'skirting' to the same height as the tray:

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It would be a lot more work, and I wasn't quite sure how it was going to work in practice, but the theory seemed fine...

 

[jonny round boy]

Part 2 - Beginning Construction

The first stage of the construction was to cut up one of the sheets:

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This isn't a full sheet - originally, they were 4100x1250mm, but I had to cut them down to 2400 long to get them home!

The tray itself was to finish at 802x802mm. There was going to be a 2nd layer of the 12mm solid surface around the edge, so I cut the base at 778mm square. The next thing to do was to rout the drain hole & grooves. I did a couple of test pieces first, and then moved on to the actual tray. First I made a template for the hole, and clamped it into position:

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Then, using my OF1400 with a 30mm collar and 1/2" bit, I routered out the area to a depth of around 9mm (leaving approx. 3mm remaining):

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The next stage was to round over this opening. I took a 1/4" roundover bit, removed the bearing, and carefully cut away the post that held the bearing, leaving the bottom of the bit flush. Since the bearing of the roundover bit was 1/2", the same as the cutter I'd used to rout the hole, I could use exactly the same set-up with the 30mm collar & template:

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To finish off machining the hole, I could simply switch back to the 1/2" straight bit, and rout through the bottom using the 30mm collar in the hole, without a template. As luck would have it, this left a perfect-sized opening for the shower waste I was using:

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To do the drainer grooves, I made a jig, which consisted of a piece of 18mm MDF with a 30mm wide slot down the middle (for the 30mm collar on my router), a disk of 9mm MDF, sized to fit perfectly in the waste hole, and a spacer block, to lift the other end. I forgot to take pictures of this part of the process, but here's the jig, and one of the test pieces I made:

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I could insert the jig into the waste hole, swing it round to whatever angle I wanted, and rout the groove with a core cutting bit. Although the original design had lots of grooves, I decided to just do three to keep it from looking cluttered. Once the waste hole & grooves were sanded (by hand), it looked like this:

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You can also see that I've routered a shallow rebate around the edge; this is for the coved sections I'll be describing in part 3.

 

[jonny round boy]

Part 3 - Coved Sections

In order to strengthen the bottom of the tray, I wanted to double-up the thickness. I could have glued another piece the same size beneath the base, but I couldn't work out how to guarantee a nice, even spread of adhesive across such a large area, without trapping pockets of air in.

To get around this, I cut several 100mm wide strips of solid surface material (the white I was originally intending to use for the duckboard) and glued them on individually, simply butting them up to each other:

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When dry, I simply trimmed the excess off by running the router round with a bearing-guided trimming bit.

Since the sides of the shower tray and the skirting around the floor needed to be coved, and I don't own a coving router (and couldn't justify buying one) I had to use another method.

Normally in solid surface, a strip of material is set into a shallow rebate, and once the shape is assembled a cove router is used to rout the cove shape into the strip. I simply did the same, but routed the curve into the strip before assembly.

I started with quite a wide strip, and set up a 3/8" cove bit in my router table. I then routed the cove into the edge of the strip:

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Since the corners needed to be coved too, I needed the coves to be stopped on the 4 bottom pieces:

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I then cut the strip off the edge of the wider strip (using a spacer to set the rail back the correct distance from the edge each time) before repeating the process several times to produce all the coved sections I required:

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Once this strip is glued into the rebate around the edge, and the excess adhesive sanded off, the cove becomes seamless:

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This image shows how the various components fit together to produce the coved corner:

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[jonny round boy]

part 4 - Finishing the main tray

Since the stopped coves had to meet each other exactly in the corners, cutting them to length needed to be done very precisely. Gluing & clamping them all up was a challenge too:

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Here's the tray with all the main components glued together:

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and the corner detail:

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As you can see, there's quite a bit of adhesive to sand afterwards. It's not advisable to try to clean the adhesive up before it cures, as it can shrink back slightly into the joint. also, the adhesive can discolour if contaminated. I sanded the bulk of it with my ETS150-3, using the medium backing pad - that way, the edge of the disk will flex up the cove rather than digging in. All the corners had to be sanded by hand, which was a laborious task!

Here's the tray with a second layer of material bonded aound all four edges, and the whole thing sanded:

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and with the shower waste fitted:

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Next up, the installation!

 

[jonny round boy]

Part 5 - Installation

Firstly, I dryfitted the tray to make sure it fitted:

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You can see the additional plate fitted to the underside - this is bonded, in order to tie the two sections together, and also holds the traps for the waste fittings.

The tray fitted so well, and so tightly, that it wasn't possible to turn it within the space, so I had to cut a hole in the plasterboard in order to maneuver it round!

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The tray was bonded to the subfloor with MS polymer adhesive, and left to set.

I then cut & dryfitted the first floor section into place, to ensure it would fit once the rest of the work was done:

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The floor section was then removed, the drainer grooves routered, and then fitted with the coved upstand/skirting sections:

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Once this was all sanded, it was bonded into place - with solid surface adhesive to the tray, and the MS polymer to the floor:

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The joint between the two sections was then sanded:

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In the last photo, it looks as though the coved piece is a slightly different shade - when I first noticed this I was devastated - until I realised it's not a different shade, it's a shadowline from the light in the shower!  [embarassed]

The additional floor sections were done in a similar way, although due to the layout and the tight space, most of the coved/skirting sections had to be bonded (and sanded) in situ.

 

[jonny round boy]

Part 6 - Final Pictures & Thoughts

Here's a few shots of the final installation, with the glass wall panels & door:

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In this picture, you can see the detail around the doorframe. It's difficult to see, but there is a 5mm high 'waterfall' edge where it meets the door:

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And here, the other side of the doorframe, and the skirting going around the toilet pan at the other end of the room:

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I also used the solid surface to make cills for the openings where the towel radiator and sink are installed:

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This room has been in use for about 7 or 8 months now, and it all works as it should. I was concerned about the slippiness of the solid surface when wet, but it's really not an issue, and grippier than a usual acrylic tray.

If I were to do it again, knowing what I know now, the only thing I would change is the second waste. I put it in to catch the water that escaped around the edge of the door, but I managed to get the gaps down to less than 3 mm all round, so very little actually escapes and as a result it's kind of unnecessary.

The tray itself is completely flat - it's not shaped, and the only fall to the waste is due to a slight slope in the subfloor, about 3mm at it's worst. I decided that shaping it would a step too far, and would complicate the build beyond my abilities. In spite of this, the tray drains well, and very little water is left after use.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the outcome, and, more importantly, so is my girlfriend!

 

[windmill man]

Good to see you back on the FOG Jonathan, so you finally got round to using the Getacore stuff. Looking forward to see how you are going to do the coved upstand . Something creative i bet

John

 

[Deansocial]

Looks good. Did you tank the area?

 

[jonny round boy]

Looks good. Did you tank the area?

Thanks. No, I didn't bother. As I knew from the start I would be using glass wall panelling, I didn't even bother using cement board in the shower area, as I always have before. Just standard plasterboard.

 

[jmbfestool]

I mentioned Plasterboard in shower Area to Dean on Facebook  [eek]  

was just about to post the question untill it said Warning - while you were reading 2 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.

I like the shower tray.  Something to keep in mind!  Done good job!

JMB

 

[jonny round boy]

For any water to get to the plasterboard, it'd need to penetrate 6mm of toughened glass, and the vinyl backing.

I did use a paint-on rubber membrane in the corners & round the tray before I fitted the glass though, so there's a bit of added protection if the (2) silicone seals ever fail...

 

[Alan m]

great to see you posting jrb.
i havnt read the thread yet but the pics look great.

 

[nclemmons]

Wow - great photo essay for how you did this.

Really like the design and final product.

neil

 

[JHC]

This is an amazing project. Thanks for sharing it.

 

[Eli]

Very cool. Thanks for this, it's an area I've been wanting to have a go.

Wait, that came out wrong.

So did that.  [big grin]

 

[tiralie]

Great looking job!
Thanks for documenting it with such detail.
Those panels are not light, fitting them must have been work.
Tim