Bouncy-House Shower

I am lucky to have my mom around. At 92, she lives in the same house she bought with my dad in 1959.

Like my mom, the house remains original — no remodel, no additions. As charming as that sounds,  there are problems. For instance, the floor of the shower is shot.

I decided to fix that. I'm not a contractor, but I own tools and display modest tool-using skills. I figured fixing the shower floor would be easy with the right strategy. Really, what is a shower floor? It's a tiny bit of tile slapped on a small piece of plywood.

My mom is always skeptical when I bring my tools into the house. However, I had accomplished an interim fix about six months ago, carefully filling small gaps where water was seeping into the woodwork.

Unfortunately, I did that job perfectly. Once the wood dried out completely during the Summer and Fall, it shrunk. The floor buckled severely, creating enormous gaps that wouldn't be filled by caulk. Now, in Winter, the wind was whistling up from beneath the house, creating a kind of Marilyn-Monroe-on-the-subway-grate effect. As pleasant as that was for Marilyn on a hot New York street, it was definitely not pleasant for me in the shower.

Many years ago, I discovered a product called Wet Patch. It is made for fixing roof problems — as their literature claims:

Made from heavy-bodied asphalt, it patches holes and cracks even in a driving rain or under water, and is so versatile it may be used whether the weather is wet, dry, hot or cold.

Thus, it seemed ideal for fixing huge gaps in a shower floor. It comes in a five-gallon can — plenty of gooey material to squeeze into the cracks and crevices of a shower floor.

Which is exactly what it did. I left the house feeling all handy and righteous — you know, Mission Accomplished. That is, until I came back many hours later. The whole house smelled awful — very petrochemically bad.

So that is why this is recommended for exterior use only, I remarked to myself. The chemical smell could kill you. Hmmm.

Next, I duct-taped a thick sheet of plastic over the floor and poured concrete on top of that. No more off-gassing!

Except, well, Wet Patch is not a great substrate. It's like Play-Doh. The concrete broke up. The Wet Patch/Play-Doh substrate oozed around under the plastic. Standing in the shower was like visiting a watery Bouncy-House.

Which is what I do every morning I am there. I mean, the shower works. The floor is sealed. You just have to get used to the squishiness.

Next Summer the shower will have to be totally replaced. That's a job beyond my modest skills. Meanwhile, I will enjoy the Bouncy-House experience of squishing around in the shower. It's not something everyone gets a chance to enjoy. I am lucky.