so you might be wondering why i’m sittingin a walk-in shower. well the reason why is this is easily my most favorite room in ourhome. my wife and i, we saved up our money to remodel this bathroom. it turned out phenomenal.and we have that opportunity for you today to see how to build your own walk-in shower,and it starts out with the shower pan. so today we’re going to show you how to installthe wedi ligno shower pan. it will make your walk-in shower base completely 100% waterproof.it’s easy to install. so if you’re a diyer or a professional, you can definitely do thison your own. and here’s the deal: walk-in showers are way safer than stepping over abathtub or a curb shower in the morning. so if you’re looking to build a walk-in shower,this is a great video to start with, all right?
so let’s dive into it right now.today we’re going to show you how to install the wedi fundo ligno shower pan. they comein a lot of different configurations, but we’re using the 48†x 48†x â¾â€ thickpan. what you need to do first is dry fit it over top your wood subfloor. that’s whatsteve is doing right here. he’s going to mark out the position using a pencil and thenpull the ligno pan up off the floor and cut down the subfloor. so the way that you’regoing to cut down the subfloor is one of two ways: either with a sawzall, like steve isshowing you here. he’s just using a demo wood blade by diablo. or you can use a circularsaw. but the nice thing with the sawzall is you can use the blade to guide your cut alongany 2’ x 4’s. so he’s just going to
cut out a small section. it’s like a 1’x 48†section then use a wonder bar or pry bar to pull up that small section of woodto expose the joist. he’s going to use a bigger pry bar to do the exact same thingwith the bigger portion of the osb. so here you go. now all your joists are exposed.pull any nails that are on top of them. place a level on every single joist and also acrossthe joists to make sure that they are level because the ligno won’t drain properly ifit’s not the case. you can shave down joists if they’re a little bit boat up. or youcan sister 2’x material to them to get them nice and level.now in this case, what steve is doing is applying liquid nail to a 2’ x 4’. he’s goingto place that 2’ x 4’ â¾â€ below the
existing joist. the top of the joist he’sgot a â¾â€ osb template that he put on top of it, and he’s tacking it in place. nowthe reason why he’s doing this is we’re going to be putting osb or you can put plywoodover top those 2’ x 4’s and in between the joists such that now you’ve got a subfloorthat’s â¾â€ below your subfloor within the rest of the bathroom. so you can see allthose 2’ x 4’s are tacked to the joists. now we’re ready to install the osb.so steve is going to slide the osb underneath any existing 2’ x 4’ bases. we want theosb underneath the existing framing because we’re going to apply thinset to it, andyou don’t want the thinset to ooze out between the framing and the new osb. now in this case,we’re dealing with the stairwell framing.
we had to tack on more 2’xs, and then we’regoing to put the osb on top of that. now steve is going to apply liquid nail to it. i’mshowing you this because you may run into this exact situation, you may not. but againthe reason why we’re putting the osb nice and tight to the frame is so the thinset won’tooze out in between those two joints. now if you’ve got drywall underneath thejoist—so for example, a ceiling—you want to put in your plumbing first even beforeyou put those nailers in. so get all your plumbing in place before you put the nailersin and before you attach the plywood to the nailers. steve is applying liquid nail toall the nailers, and then he is going to put his osb on top of that and slide it underneaththe 2’x framing and tack them in place using
a nailer. you can also use decking screwsand an impact driver to do this if you don’t have a nailer. so what we’re doing hereis providing a really nice, sound structural platform that is â¾â€ below the existingwood subfloor, and we’re going to put the ligno on top of that, which we’re goingto show you here shortly. but again, this is nice, strong structural base for the ligno.you’re going to dry fit the ligno again and then draw a hole marking the locationof the drain because the bottom of the ligno needs to fit down through that hole. so weneed to cut a 6 â½â€ in the osb here. so that’s what steve is doing. he’s measuringout from center, from the center of that drain location, a 6 â½â€ hole. you pre-drill usinga spade bit, and then you can cut that out
using a jigsaw. and when you get done withit, you’ll have a nice 6 â½â€ hole for the ligno to fit down through. and that’svery, very important that you get this set up before you apply the thinset to the osb.the next step is to attach 2’x material to the back of your framing because we’regoing to be installing your plumbing. and what we’re using here is a delta mixingvalve. this is a rough in valve with integral stops that’s critical if you don’t haveshut off valves. we’re also going to have a diverter valve attached to that becausethat diverter valve is going to going to run plumbing to the shower head, to a handheldshower, and then also body sprays. so you want about 14†between your rough in andthat diverter valve to allow for enough space
for the escutcheon. so the escutcheon willfit around that rough in valve, and you want tile to be between the rough in and the diverter.now in the case of a delta rough in, you want the 2’x material to be flush with the backof your framing. that way when you go to secure the rough in valve to that 2’x material,the rough in and the diverter will be flush with your â½â€ wedi that’s going to begoing on the wall. and that will allow for a really good look when you put your tileonto the wedi. the ligno shower pan by wedi requires latexmodified thinset. in this case, we’re using mapei’s kerabond and keralastic. the keralasticis the latex additive. you need about â½ a bag of the kerabond for a 4’ x 4’ showerpan. so that’s what steve is doing here.
he’s adding the kerabond to the keralasticand mixing it up per the mapei directions. now in this case, we’re using a â¼â€ xâ¼â€ square notch trowel. we’re going to use that to embed the thinset onto the osb.the first thing you want to do before installing the pan is to actually install the drain assembly.and what you need is the wedi caulking that comes with it. this is actually a sausagecontainer cartridge for a sausage gun. and this just gives you about twice as much asa regular caulking gun, but they do sell it in regular caulking tube forms. so the drainis pretty simple, pretty standard. it just has a slip ring, a tightening lock ring, aplastic slip ring, then a rubber gasket at the bottom. so what you want to do is firstapply some wedi caulking to where the drain
piece is going to sit, and be generous withit. and what i always do is just go around in the inside of the drain assembly as welljust to make sure that there isn’t any missing. so you just sit this in place. and aroundthe back side you put the rubber gasket on first, plastic slip ring, and the lockingnut. you don’t need any pliers or wrenches or anything like that. this is all just goingto be a stiff hand tighten this to it. and there’s an excess sealant. just wipe off,and that’s all there is to it. so then we’ll be able to thinset this pan in. we got thisin place. so since wedi is a waterproof shower system,you have to use all the components that go with it. and the wedi waterproof caulkingthat is specifically made for this product
must be used, especially for the drain assemblyand any joints that you use. the thing with this foam products is that you’ve got tobe careful with not using any harsh chemicals. anything that’s not basically used in thesystem: no liquid nail, no silicone, nothing like that. just use the caulking. and thecaulking is pretty amazing stuff. it has a real flexibility to it, so it never completelyhardens. and that’s why when you use it in the joints and in the corners and stuff,it’s going to last forever and not have any cracking. always use the products thatare within the system. that’ll guarantee the waterproof system.first thing now that we have the drain assembly put on, you just want to dry fit this againand make sure this is going to fit in the
proper location before you do a thinsettingdown. because once your thinset is down, especially the ligno pan, it gets very difficult to pullback up because that thinset’s really just suctioning this to the floor. so just dryfit it. make sure it fits. make sure that drain is sitting down in correctly. yeah,so no banisters. everything’s sit flush on there.now we’re going to go ahead and thinset this pan down. and what i always do is tryto take a damp rag and wipe down the area that you’re going to be thinsetting. thisis on any tile installation on plywood. you kind of just clear off the dust. moisten theplywood a little bit so that the thinset doesn’t get dried out too quickly. notch a â¼â€ squarenotch trowel, and burn the thinset ino the
plywood. do that first and then you’ll notchit out. in this small space, we’re going to go ahead and back butter, back trowel ourpan because we’re not going to have much room to put this in prior after i do that.so we’ll go ahead and back butter the pan. whatever way you trowel marks, run it thesame way on the pan. the idea behind that is to allow the hinges to collapse and removeany excess air. okay, so with that back buttered, we’ll finish our pan here. okay.that should get good adhesion on it. since we have a little bit of customary shower pansize with this back wall, we should go ahead and just make sure that our back wall receivesthe â½â€ panel tightly. so any thinset that comes up through your dado joint here, youwant to wipe out clean around the pan. and
that’s definitely going to happen if youhave good thinset coverage. so wipe that clean because you’re going to be using the wedisealant, and that sealant needs to seal to this foam. so make sure all your edges areall clean. after the pa is thinsetted down, you wantto put some weight on the pan itself. so extra pieces of piles of tile work pretty well forthat. for the first 30 minutes at least have some weight on there. and then once you getsome of these side panels in, you’ll be able to take them off.so hopefully you saw how easy it is to use the wedi ligno shower pan. now we’re goingto have a second video for you that’s going to be a part two. we’re going to show youhow to install the wedi building panels on
your framing, and that will make the wallsin your walk-in shower 100% waterproof as well.so if you enjoyed this video, give us a thumbs up. if you’ve got a question, ask it downin the comments section. if you’re looking for more advanced training on how to remodelyour bathroom, you can check out bathroomrepairtutor.com. so again, you can go to bathroomrepairtutor.comto check out the advanced training for bathroom remodeling. that’s where steve and i alsogive support for diyers who want to do a bathroom renovation on their own.so again, thanks so much for watching today’s video. you can check out part two here soonon how to build your walk-in shower completely using the wedi building panels and the wediligno shower pan. all right, so again, thanks
for watching. take care. we’ll talk to yousoon. i don’t know about you, but the bathroomis one of the only places in my house where i can get some peace and solitude. don’ttell my family. this is where i hide.