Third Floor Bathroom Renovation: Plumbing and Prepping for Tile!

The only work that we hired out for this project was the rough-in plumbing for the bathroom. I did not want to risk doing all of the tile work only to find out there is a leak in the floor or wall due to a bad copper or PVC connection. The photo below shows the rough-in for the double vanity. We made sure to get at least 2" of solid insulation board behind all of the pipes as this bathroom was along an exterior wall.... Otherwise the pipes will most likely freeze in the winter. Also you will notice the stack vent for the sink had to be routed in such a way that did not interfere with the mirror locations. 

 We framed the wall such that there would be one long ledge aligned with the window sill. The bottom framing is 2x6's while the top is 2x3's. This allowed us the space we needed for the vanity drain pipes and mounting area for the wall-mounted faucets. (above)

 We bought three countertop brackets from countertopbracket.com for the granite top and floating vanity. We spaced our studs to align with where the brackets needed to meet the countertop. We decided to put the outlets underneath the countertop in the drawer area of the vanity. We didn't want to see an outlet on the tile backsplash. (above)

The new toilet is in a different location than the existing so there was some new piping that needed to be added to slope back to the stack under the floor. We also replaced the case iron stack vent. (above)

This is the framing I did for the shower / toilet wall. We added a niche above the toilet and additional 2x6 blocking at the base of the shower for additional support. (above)

For the tile substrate we used a Kerdi waterproof membrane over cement board. Here is a photo of the vanity with the membrane complete. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of the cement board without the membrane. The hardest part about installing the membrane was that the mortar would dry fast so you had to be quick about troweling the mortar on the cement board and then applying the membrane. You will also see the pipe penetrations had kerdi membrane pipe seals with rubber gaskets. I'm a huge fane of the kerdi system. All of the tile backer materials and supplies were kerdi products bought from a local tile distributor.

This is the shower area with the sloped kerdi shower base. The shower is 72" wide and will slope to a tilable (is that a word?) linear drain. The drain is called Kerdi-Line.

Here is a photo of the drain we bought. 

The niche above the toilet (above) for indoor plants and extra storage.

One of the best products in the tile industry: the kerdi membrane!