A Shower Worthy of a Boutique Hotel - How to DIY a Bathroom You Can Enjoy

*EDIT* I added better "Finished" pictures at the end.

I paid people to fit my bathroom. 

I wish I hadn't. After pipe fittings blowing off, several leaks, and tiles falling off the wall in the shower, I decided that I could not do a worse job than the chimpanzees I had let loose in there, so I set about doing it all again myself. 

I realised that there is a reason quality tradespeople charge a premium, and how people i would not trust to make a cup of tea without breaking a window get away with passing themselves off as quality tradespeople. But what I also realised is that this kind of thing is not beyond the scope of someone in possession of their wits, some tools and a big bucket of patience. Oh, and elbow grease, lots and lots of elbow grease. 

To be clear: 

I am not a qualified plumber - you may want a qualified professional to do the plumbing because mistakes will be costly. I didn't do this, I did some reading, took advice, followed instructions, used the correct tools and quality products, and so far so good. If something goes wrong, nobody dies and nobody gets pregnant, so there's no problems that can't be easily resolved.

I am not a qualified tiler. Again, you may want a professional to do this for a perfect finish. But as with the plumbing, I followed advice, listened, did some reading, watched some videos and gave it a go. I'm happy with the results. It's not absolutely perfect, but it is better than I had assumed it would be. If something goes wrong, nobody dies and nobody gets pregnant, so there's no problems that can't be easily resolved.

I am not a joiner. I simply followed advice, watched videos, and approached it methodically. I made mistakes, and had to undo some work and redo it. If something goes wrong, nobody dies and nobody gets pregnant, so there's no problems that can't be easily resolved.

I am, however, a qualified electrician. You definitely do not want to attempt electrics as a DIY enthusiast. If you get plumbing wrong, no one dies. Mess up your tiling and no one dies. Get your electrics wrong and your house could burn down, or kill someone. Don't mess with your electrics. However, if you insist, my advice is DON'T MESS WITH YOUR DAMNED ELECTRICS!!!!!

I made lots of mistakes as I went along, and I would do things lightly differently if I were to do this again. But I saved a LOT of money, even after buying all the cool tools to do the job, and I learned lots which is invaluable! 

So, with no more ado and no further gilding of the lily, I shall press on to tell you how I made good a leaky, stinky, mouldy bathroom! 

It is impossible to tell you what you will need, so I cannot provide you with a bill of materials - the aim of this instructamabubble is to show you how you can achieve things yourself that you didn't think were possible... 

That being said, materials and tools I required (some of which I have put pictures of, to clear up ambiguity): 

• A shower tray (very important!)
• A shower mixer (very important!)
• A shower door (Very important! In fact, lets just assume that it was all important)
• Tiles (use a tile calculator to figure out how many you need and make sure you allow 10% wastage. Do not try and be a smartass and calculate it yourself. You will go wrong, and either have to buy more tiles, or be left with a millionty leftover tiles at the end that you overbought and do not need. Or, if you are me, BOTH of these things! I didn't buy enough tiles, then I bought too many extra tiles. Now I have lots of tiles). 
• Tile adhesive
• Hardiebacker Cement board - this stuff is really tough, hard wearing and strong. Way better than plasterboard and perfect for a shower.
• Waterproof plasterboard
• 15mm plastic pipes and assorted pushfit connections (we will get to the arguments about these later)
• A sink
• A toilet
• A spare sink for when you drop the sink
• Timber studwork (I used CLS)
• Assorted timber - I just bought stuff as I needed it
• A LOT of countersunk screws - wood screws, plasterboard screws, wall screws with matching rawl plugs etc. You would be best off buying a few boxes of assorted sizes. You will need screws that can go through the timber, with enough length to hold it securely in the wall left over, with rawl plugs that are the correct diameter for the screw. Get rawl plugs without collars if you can, this is important later. I used high quality plated 6mm countersunk screws in lengths of 50mm, 75mm, and 150mm. You will definitely need long screws for securing the hardiebacker board into brick through timber. I strongly suggest reading this guide all the way through and then thinking hard about your own project before making your material choices. 
• Tanking kit (shower waterproofing kit, whatever word for it your local place has). My kit came with primer, edging tape, tanking resin and a handy empty bucket, possibly for mixing large amounts of porridge. 
• Assorted packers of varying thickness

Tools:

• A wetsaw (This is for cutting tiles accurately, when you need to cut notches, or awkward shapes). 
• A manual tile cutter (I cannot stress how much of a difference a high quality one of these helps, especially with large format tiles! Just score and snap! I bought one called "The Big Clinker")
• Tile adhesive spreader (For spreading tile adhesive)
• A mains powered hole making machine (mains powered hammer drill for drilling bricks. One with variable speed control and hammer function is essential)
• Assorted masonry, wood, and all purpose drill bits (I bought some higher quality bits, as I like mine to last more than five minutes). 
• Countersink drill bit
• A battery powered hole making machine (battery powered drill - for screwing in screws and lighter work than the mains drill)
• Assorted screwdriver bits suitable for the screws you bought (use the correct bit! Just because it kinda fits, it doesn't mean it won't mash the screw head and create a serious headache for you)
• A plaster mixing paddle (Also known as a whisk. It's for mixing your tile adhesive, and fits in your mains powered drill)
• A mitre saw (I treated myself to an Evolution III double bevel mitre saw, and the time having this saved me was fantastic. Any angle, any bevel, it made life a LOT easier!)
• Hammers (assorted, I needed a claw hammer, a mash hammer, a sledge hammer, and MC Hammer - someone had to tell me when to stop and when it was hammer time, after all)
• A sweeping brush (A stiff yard brush, and a dustpan and brush)
• Caulking gun (This is for squirting silicone sealer later on. You are obliged to pretend it is a gun and shout "Pew-pew-pew" as you "shoot" people with it whenever you pick it up). 
• Long spirit level and straight edge (I have a selection of long and short levels, all with a straight edge). 
• Tape measure
• Hardiebacker carbide scoring tool
• Hacksaw
• Wood saw
• Rotary Pipe Cutter
• Electric jigsaw with a ceramic cutting blade

Things I did not have that would have been useful: 

• A laser level (a little device that casts a laser line to give you a straight edge to work to)
• A distometer (a laser tape measure, this would have made it much easier to measure the room)
• A friend
• Competent tradesman to have fitted the bathroom in the first place
• A better, industrial, vacuum cleaner

The first thing to do is really consider your project. What do you want to achieve? What are the current problems? 

I started by considering very carefully what I wanted the end result to look like. Actually, no, that is a lie. I went straight in there like a wrecking ball, pulled the old bathroom to pieces and made a total mess of things. THEN I actually sat down in amongst the rubble, and started to plan. Do not do this. 

Take careful measurements, and consider each element of the project. Your measurements alone will help guide you as to what will and will not work. 

Using a software tool such as SketchUp! will help you here too. I drew a floor plan, and the first thing I noticed was that my walls were not square and parallel. Or even straight. Opposite walls were not the same length, and parts were bowed, the floor not level, all were things to consider. It also allows you to work out tile coverage, how much material to buy, angles to cut, it was a really handy tool. You can pretty much work out all your issues before you lift a single tool.

Once I had drawn a floorplan, I was able to then really visualise how the room would look finished. It took several iterations, but after a while I was happy. 

Specific issues I faced: 

Issue One

This bathroom is at the front of the house. The soil stack (the big pipe where all the poop and nasties go into the ground and vanish forever) is at the back of the house. This bathroom uses a macerator to chop up and blend all the poopy nastiness into nasty poopy soup, and pump it to the back of the house where it goes down the magical poopchute to be dealt with by whoever deals with poopy soup. Unfortunately, the manpanzee who installed my bathroom did not connect the shower to this pump. Instead, he joined the shower waste to the poopysoup pipe with a Y-piece and a none-return valve. This created two problems: 

1) There is a rise on the floor between the front and back of the house, so the pipe does not drain with gravity, meaning that the shower cannot drain freely. You had to regularly shut the water off to let it drain, or flush the toilet mid-shower to create a siphon in the pipe to drag the shower water away. 

2) When you flush the toilet, the pressure would shut the none-return valve, but not before the stinky aromatic blend of poopy soup, pee, and stagnant water smell came through the shower waste. 

One day, the none-return valve failed. Which meant that the shower would, on occasion, fill with poopy soup. Our solution was to issue a total ban pooping. On day three, I realised that this was not sustainable long term. Luckily, I remembered I have a second bathroom, which is connected directly to the soil stack, and so it needn't have been a total ban on pooping, just a ban on pooping in that toilet was required. I took a huge three-days-worth poop, and while pooping I thought about what I needed to do here.

• I needed the shower to drain into the macerator, and pump all that water out to the soil stack. 
• The shower would need to be higher than the macerator so that gravity can do it's thing. 
• I needed to build a plinth for the shower tray to raise the level. 

Issue Two

The chaps who "installed" my shower, did not seal the shower tray properly, nor prime the walls properly prior to tiling. This resulted in the tiles coming away from the wall slightly in places, cracking the tile grout. Water would get through these gaps, into the wall, and down the edge of the shower tray too. This made the wall damp, the ceiling below the shower damp, and made everything just... Damp! 

• When I build the shower, it needs to be done in such a way that water damage cannot happen again. 

Issue Three

We had a couple of pipes blow off, and a leak or two from a poorly sealed joint in the pipes. This caused a lot of water damage down stairs.

It also caused much LOLZ when the cold water pipe blew off under the sink, while I was 700 miles away celebrating New Year with friends. My housemate was home, and he got very wet and very cold while trying to stop the flow of water. The full story is in italics so you can skip quickly if you aren't interested: 

My phone rang. It was my housemate. My housemate is terrified of making phone calls, he is a texter. A phone call means something serious has happened, like his leg fell off or the house burned down or there's no more coffee left. 

I was not fast enough answering, and my phone sent him to voicemail. I tried to call him back, but his phone was engaged. This sent me into a bit of a panic. 

I tried again several times, voicemail every time. 30 minutes later, my phone beeped. Voicemail, from my house mate! 

I quickly listened to it... the message went like this: 

"Dave, DAVE!!! Ring me back as soon as you get this! It's an emergency!!! The water pipe in the bathroom has burst and I can't find the stopcock. Ring me NOW!!!" 

But... He forgot to hang up. So I had half an hour of running water flooding my house, and him shouting "Oh SH*T, SH*T, WHAT-DO-I-DO-SH*********T!!! NO NO NO NO NO!!!! HELP!!! SOMEONE HEEEEEELP!!!!!!! WHERE'S THE STOP COCK?!?!?!?!?" and so on. A full half hour of his despair. I know I should not laugh, but it was really, really funny.

Listening to this message, in my inebriated state, had me howling with laughter. Hell, the damage was already done now, I was 700 miles away, so why not just enjoy the voicemail. I am not kidding, I was in tears with laughter, my sides hurt and I thought I was gonna puke! I wish I had saved the message so that you could listen.

So, I called him back, and said "Ok buddy, calm down. The damage is now done, this is what insurance is for..." and guided him to where the shut off for the whole house was, and how to access it. Then I asked him to use whatever would absorb water, towels, bedding, duvet, whatever, and mop up whatever he could and throw everything wet into the bathtub in the spare bathroom I forgot we had when I banned pooping in my house. Like I said, this is what insurance is for, after all. I then talked him through capping the pipe so he could have water back on. When I got home, the damage wasn't so bad and was easily put right. A little paint, a little woodwork, nothing serious at all. I didn't even bother claiming on the insurance.

We had a couple of other water related issues from that bathroom. So, the takeaway here was: 

• Make the pipes accessible, and make sure they are right with no joints that cannot be accessed. Shut off valves in accessible spots.
• Oh, and do the job properly in the first place! 

Issue Four

I want tiles floor to ceiling, and for the bathroom to not be mouldy, stinky, and easy to clean. The walls not being square would surely make tiling harder, so I needed to figure something out here. 

• Straighten the walls before I tile!

From there, you can start to put together a "To Do" list and assess what materials you may need.

Strip out the old. I had no intention of working with anything that was already there. I took the room back to bare brick. This might not be necessary in all cases, but there had been so many bodges in the past that I had no choice. I would not trust anything in that room without doing this first, and I am SO glad I did!!!

Everything came out of that room, I took no prisoners. I even took care to relocate Boris, the huge spider who lived behind the toilet. That was a task in its self, she is huge! She has tattoos and smokes camel cigarettes, and she did not want to come quietly. The last I heard form her she was renting a flat in Newcastle city centre and worked as a doorman at one of the rougher bars in town.

It took a lot of cleaning, sweeping and tidying up... The chases you can see cut into the bricks are from the old shower pipework - I was not going to put the shower mixer there again. But this is what I found when I did it:

1. The plaster was blown, it wasn't stuck to the walls in a lot of places and came away in huge sheets. If I had tiled to that to save time, I would have been picking up the tiles from the floor one day soon.
2. The water damage was continuing, there was a leak by the wall that I would not have spotted had I not pulled everything out, courtesy of "Bodgeit Quick & Scarper Building Services". This would have required deconstructing the bathroom to fix later.
3. The poopy soup pipe also had a leak, it was happily dripping away into some timberwork which obviously now smelled rank, and would have eventually made a poopy stain on the ceiling down stairs in our living room.

At this point I was apocalyptically cross at the fools who had done this "work" that I had paid them to do. I was so cross I had to go and eat cake.

Out came the portable electric heater with fan, and I pointed that at the damp on a low setting, and walked away and ate cake until it was dry in there.

At least I had found every possible problem by pulling everything out. Starting with a blank canvas means I can make everything right to start with. Silver linings!

I designed my shower enclosure in such a way that the shower would go in the corner of the room, with a stud wall at one end of the shower enclosure.

The idea was that the pipework would be in this stud wall, closed in by shelves or cupboards and be accessible in the event there is an issue. The SketchUp picture shows the idea I had with it.

There is a very tried and tested way of building stud walls, and excellent videos on your favourite video hosting website (no, not THAT one, the "Safe For Work" one!!!) so I won't be too exhaustive here.

This video is a pretty good quick guide.

Build your stud wall with the noggins (that is the horizontal bits) where your joints in the hardiebacker board will be. Make the spacing in your verticals match the width of the boards you are fixing to it. The goal is to have no floating edges on your boards. Using SketchUp to plan it will help you plan a LOT here!

Be very careful to make sure your verticals are actually vertical, and your noggins are horizontal. Use a spirit level.

I had to take my wall down and re-do it, as the timber I used was bowed. Check your timber is not before you use it!

I added some bracing between the stud wall and the existing wall behind it to make sure the stud wall was absolutely rock solid. By the time I was done, it was pretty good!

You can see in the pics, quite a bit of it was "Use what you have to hand" so the ceiling and floor timbers are in a slimmer timber than the uprights. Not the best, but it worked well enough for what I needed.

This is where the mitre saw really came into its own. It had a laser guide on it, and made very neat, accurate cuts exactly where I needed them. Way better than a hand saw, for sure! Buy one, you will not regret it! Mine has the bonus of being able to cut wood, steel, aluminium, whatever I put in it.

I designed my shower so that the controls would be on the wall, and there would be no visible pipework.

Following the instructions carefully on the mixer, I added some timber to the stud wall to hold it in place.

Then, using the biggest, strongest screws that would fit, I made sure that the house would fall down before this shower mixer would move.

There is tons of adjustment in the control knobs for different wall thicknesses, so getting the position right, taking into account the thickness of the boards and tiles, was not so bad. I set it at a height that worked for me, and once happy I secured it in place.

Now came the plumbing. I used plastic pipes and speedfit / pushfit fixtures. I heard everything from the doomsayers telling me that every time I used one a fairy would die, my house would explode and my children would drown in the flood that would surely come from using these, right through to the people who said that they were the best things ever and I would be guaranteed a place in heaven just for considering using them.

My personal experience of them:

They are easy to use and work very well, PROVIDED YOU FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS! I also suspect that if you bought the cheapest ones you could find, they would fail.

That said, you have to be very, very, VERY sure when you make the connections. The brand I used do NOT like letting go if you have to change anything later. I wasted a few fittings by prematurely connecting things.

I switched off the water, and marked where on the existing pipework I wanted to cut to remove what I did not need. Then I made sure the water was off, and fetched my hacksaw to cut the old pipes.

After checking that the water was definitely off, and opening every tap in the house to make sure, I double and triple checked that my marks on where to cut were definitely definitely 100% where I wanted them, before I then went and made sure the water was still off.

Then I cut the pipes. In the wrong place. And water came gushing out of the cuts.

What did I do wrong? Well, it turns out that the knuckle dragging, mouth breathing oxygen thieves who installed the bathroom took the pipes on the longest, most convoluted route possible. They had done it the lazy way and picked up existing pipes from wherever they were and ran new pipes on the end of them, rather than looking at the pipe routes and removing what was not needed.

It turned out that there was about 6 meters of unnecessary pipe going under the floor, up a wall, into the ceiling, across the length of the room and back down again under the floor. All that water had nowhere to go, even with the taps open, so when I cut the pipes... Hello! Out it came, all over the floor.

It made a big mess. Lesson learned: Towels and bucket to hand when you cut pipes!

I set about tracing the pipes, finding where they actually entered the room, and cut the redundant pipework out and removed it.

I then used a proper pipe cutter to tidy the hacked ends up on the pipe (you definitely need one of these!). The existing pipes were copper, but the push fits went on just fine to transition to plastic. Once again, the push fits DO NOT let go once you fit them. I would suggest not connecting them until all pipes are where you want them and you are 100% sure it is right.

I then carefully measured and cut the plastic pipe I was installing to route the hot and cold (make sure you know which is which!) to the shower mixer. I made sure to add valves on both the hot and cold feeds, so I could switch the water off if required and work on the shower mixer without having to switch the water off for the whole house. I used simple pushfit quarter turn valves for this, and put them behind the studwork. I put them close to the floor as that was easier to access. I should have put them as close as possible to the shower mixer, so that there would be very little water to drain out of the pipes in the event that I had to remove them. Seems I didn't learn from my pipe cutting disaster.

To use the push-fits, all you have to do is cu the pipes with a proper pipe cutter, push the pipe home nice and hard, and tighten up the screw cap to hold it on. Make sure the pipe is nice and clean and free of burs and debris from where you cut it (if you use a proper pipe cutter, it will chamfer the ends and leave a very tidy cut), and away you go.

I will admit, it looks nowhere near as beautiful as copper pipework, but it will be hidden so I don't care.

Once I was happy with the mixer position, I ran in the pipe for the shower head.

I planned to fit a matte white plastic clad ceiling, so I could get away with running the pipes along the existing old ceiling like you see in the pics. The pieces of scrap timber you see were there to act as spacers, so I knew that the pipework would sit right under the new celing when I installed it.

Again, some careful thought about the route and careful measurements before cuting the pipes, and I was happy.

I cut notches into this timber to run the cables for the shower lights later on. As I mentioned in previous steps, get a professional to do your electrics. There's a lot that can go wrong with electrics and the consequences can be dire.

Shower head in place, and test fitted to make sure it would sit nicely once the ceiling was up (I used a scrap piece of ceiling cladding to check), and then I removed the shower head.

No pics, but I did fit clips to the pipework to secure it all. You should definitely do this too.

Plumbing done!

I realised in step 19 that I should have really mentioned this earlier.

Before you go any further, mock fit your bathroom.

Make sure you have water connections to where you need them. Make sure they are clipped and secured.

This is kind of too big a topic for Instructables. Since this is about showers, I will stick to that really. But it is worth noting that your toilet and sink will also need studwork or something secure to fix to, and you will need to make sure plumbing and electrics are in place before you proceed.

I didn't really design this. It just sort of grew organically. It started out as a temporary structure to give me a height, and ended up permanent.

I calculated the height it needed to be to get the shower to drain into the macerator and mix with the poopy soup, and set about making a frame.

I then added the cross members to line up with where the stands on the shower tray would normally go on the floor.

At the points where the stands met the frame, I added upright supports between the floor and frame. Then I added more supporting woodwork everywhere, and anchored it to the stud wall, and the brick walls, using large screws for the stud wall and rawl plugs and screws for the brick walls. This thing is not going anywhere.

I wanted the shower to never, ever, ever leak. So I designed the enclosure with this in mind. To make sure that it never leaks and damages the structure of the house, between the water form the shower and the wall of the house there will be:

• Tiles
• Tanking sealer
• Hardie backer board
• The shower tray will be physically embedded into the wall.
• 2" of air because I will hang the hardie backer on timber, which will in turn be anchored to the wall
• The extraction fan hole will allow free circulation of air between outside and behind the backer boards so IF anything gets wet, it will dry easily

The SketchUp picture shows what I mean. In the event the tiles fail, the water will not get through the tanking membrane, rather it will run down into the shower tray.

In the event that the tanking membrane fails, the water will not get through the hardie backer, and instead drain into the shower tray.

If, somehow, the water soaks through the hardie backer, the water would have to also soak through the backing timbers before it could soak into the structural wall. In short, things would have to go spectacularly wrong with this shower before any water damage would affect anywhere else in the house.

So, the placement of the shower tray and the building of the stud wall all factored this in, and a lot of careful measurement and thought was required to make it work.

I added a large step, to make it easier to get in and out of the shower. This was easy, I just picked the halfway point between the shower tray level and the floor, made a timber frame and put 24mm plywood on the top. I anchored it to the stud wall and the shower plinth, and it was nice and strong.

Now, this is quite important.

With hindsight, what I should have done is put a sheet of 24mm plywood on the top of the frame, poured concrete onto this and set the shower tray in the concrete. That's what the shower tray instructions said to do, which I only found after I installed the tray.

The shower tray is acrylic-capped stone resin, and does NOT like to be flexed or bent. I got away with it so far with all the supports and bracing, but you may not so lucky. There are plenty of videos out there that tell you exactly how to do this.

Time to board out the stud wall. This was quite easy...

I installed the shower tray to give a "bottom", covering the tray with plywood to prevent damage. Keeping the tray spotlessly clean and free of debris at all times would also help here.

Then I put some packers on the shower tray lip (this protected the shower tray and also gave a small gap for me to work sealer into later), offered up a board to the wall, lined it up with the studs, and drilled pilot holes every 12". Drilling pilot holes in hardiebacker is important, the screws will not go through easily without them. It's tough stuff!

Once the pilot holes were drilled, I wound in one screw at the top to hold the board in place.

With the board held, I countersunk all the holes (you do NOT want screw heads standing proud of the boards).

Then wind in the screws into the holes, using screws that are long enough to almost go through the wood, but won't go all the way through.

Wind your first screw out, countersink that hole, and wind it back in.

I did not stagger the joints on this bit. I should have. You really need to stagger the joints, and absolutely avoid corners meeting. Do do this, start one "column" with a whole board, and the next one with with a half board.

Making the hole for the shower mixer was relatively easy. There are two ways you can approach this. Either you carefully measure the position of the shower mixer knobs, transfer these measurements to the board, and drill them and hope that you got it right.

Or, you can do it the easy way - the SketchUp! screen grabs illustrate this process.

1. Offer the board up onto the board below, to the side of the shower mixer, and slide it along so it meets the mixer.
2. On the edge of the board, mark the lowest point of where the mixer protrudes through, and the highest point.
3. Using a set square, extend these marks along the board (you can see where I have done this in blue). - TOP TIP! If you have a wood saw like the one in a picture, it is also a set square. the blade is always set into the handle at 90 degrees, so if you place the blade on the flat surface and push so the handle squares up against the edge, you can draw along the blade like a ruler.
4. Now you can get your vertical lines by placing the board over the board below and lining up the edges, and using your straight edge against the shower mixer knobs and mark the board on the vertical.
5. Then, you use a set square again and turn your horizontal lines into a rectangle by drawing your vertical lines from your marks.
6. To cut this hole out, drill a hole large enough for the ceramic cutting blade to fit through in one corner of the rectangle.
7. Use your jigsaw with the ceramic blade to cut out this rectangular hole. TOP TIP! Dampening the area a little will stop so much dust from appearing.
8. Now you can stick this board up and hopefully, if you did it right, it'll fit perfectly!

Carry on boarding your drywall until the boarding is done.

In my bill of materials, I listed "Hardie Backer".

This is similar to plasterboard, or drywall, except it is cement based. It does not fail when wet like plasterboard does, it is very rigid, heavy, tough stuff. I had opted to line the walls in the shower with the stuff. But its inflexibility means that the walls have to be straight to fit it.

How on earth do you straighten brick wall? Well, thankfully, you don't have to. Instead, I installed wooden batons to act as packers, or spacers, to stand the hardie backer boards off the wall.

I matched the distance betwen the batons with the manufacturers instructions for the screw spacing for fixing this stuff to the walls, so that the screws I used would go through the wooden stand-offs and deep into the bricks behind.

This guide is perfect, and something I found AFTER I installed mine

Yes yes, I know I haven't quite done it like the people in this link said. Do it the way the professionals tell you to. But this is what I wish* I did:

1. Drill a hole roughly in the centre of a wooden baton.
2. Offer the baton up to the wall at the ceiling level, as level as you can get it by eye, with one end of the baton against the adjacent wall. Bring the baton down slightly, to allow space for you to adjust it later.
3. Push your chalk or marker or something long and marky through the hole to mark the position on the wall.
4. Using the hammer drill, drill the wall at this mark, using a masonary drill bit of the appropriate diameter and depth for your rawl plug. This information will be on the box your plugs came in.
5. Fit the rawl plug.
6. Offer the baton back up, and loosely screw it into the rawl plug with your screw.
7. Now, you can set the baton level with a spirit level by pivoting it on the screw.
8. Once level, tighten the screw to hold the baton in place.
9. Now, using your battery drill, drill a small pilot hole every 12" (exact distance is not important here) along the centre line, the whole length of the baton, ensuring the drill marks the wall behind the baton. Make sure you have a hole about 1" away from each end.
10. Unscrew the baton and, using the hammer drill and masonary bit, drill the marks left by your pilot drill from step 8 for your rawl plugs.
11. Fit the rawl plugs in the holes
12. Offer the baton back up, and screw it back to the wall through the holes you made.
13. Check the baton is level with the spirit level
14. Now, using a straight edge, you can see if your wooden baton is straight or bowed with the wall. Mine was bowed, badly.
15. Back the screws out a little way, and use the packers to bring the wood level and straight.

Now you have a piece of timber screwed to the wall. If your wood does not cover the full width of the wall, carefully measure the missing gap, cut some timber to fit nicely, and repeat all the above steps so you have one level, straight, piece of timber just under your ceiling.

We are going to call this our datum. All your measurements will come from this datum, since it's the only straight and level thing in the room just now.

*What I actually did was exactly this, but started in the middle of the wall, which meant that when the next step came around, I was faffing around to the point where my head nearly burst. It would have been WAY easier to go top down.

Next up is to put another wooden baton across the wall below the first one. We should be aiming for 18" maximum, centre to centre, on these strips. However, the exact distance will depend on the size of your cement boards. The easy way to do this is as follows:

1. Measure the board along the vertical in whichever orinetation you intend th hang them (landscape or portrait).
2. Divide this distance by two, marking your board as a visual reference.
3. Is the distance from the edge to the mark less than 18"? If yes, move to the next step. If no, then divide the two halves of the board to give you quarters. Rinse and repeat until your divisions are less than 18". We shall call this "Distance X".
4. This step is important to get right. Measure from the TOP of the datum baton down the wall vertically, and mark "Distance X" Do this in several places along the wall, and joing these marks if you can with a horizontal line.
5. Drill a hole roughly in the centre of your next baton, and line this hole up with your horizontal line, with the end of the baton butted up to the adjacent wall. It is a good idea to push it to the opposite wall from where you did this for the ceiling, so that your joints are staggered.
6. Mark this hole on the wall with a long marky thing, and drill a hole for a rawl plug.
7. Screw the baton to the wall loosely, to allow it to move.
8. Now you are going to repeat the steps from before, drilling pilot holes and marking the wall.
9. Now screw the baton back onto the wall.
10. You are going to use your spirit level and straight edge again. This time, you are going to check the straightness horizontally, but also check that when your spirit level is put between your top baton and this one, it is perfectly vertical or "Plumb". Add or remove packers, checking regularly, until the horizontal and certical planes are flat and level. I found this step quite theraputic. Then it got boring. Then it got me angry and I had to go and eat cake.

So. Now you have the hang of this, yes? You are going to continue with fixing batons to the wall. However, there is one small but very important detail here. Very, very important. I know it is important because I did not do this.

So please PAY ATTENTION!

When you added the first baton down from the datum, you measured from the TOP of the datum baton, marked, and drilled along that line making this mark the centre of the second baton.

When you drill the next one down, and all the others from here on in here, you MUST measure Distance X from the CENTRE of your batons, NOT the top!!! I cannot stress this enough. If you don't, your board edges will be left floating, rather than secured to something solid. I had to take my boards down and add extra batons to remedy this, because I didn't measure my gaps in this way. I want to save you the pain.

I have included a little simplified sketchup to indicate what I mean. The distance between the Datum and your second baton should be a little less than the centre to centre measurement between all other batons. You can see how the boards will sit niceley with their edges on these batons in the picture. This is what you want.

Note, for simplicity's sake I have not included batons that aren't on the edge of the boards. You will have more batons between the ones you can see in the pics. Or you should. If you don't, then you did "Next Piece, Please!" wrong. Go do it again. But eat cake first.

You now have batons along the wall, each measuring "Distance X" centre to centre. Except, there is now a gap between your last baton and the floor. Or there should be, unless you were really lucky and the measurements just happened to perfectly align for your room.

So, for the bottom, you don't need to bother with it being straight on the horizontal, you just need it to be level with the batons above.

Screw your wood as close to the floor as you can get it, following the steps above but rather than making it level, just follow the line of the floor. No measuring required!

Just for funsies, I also did a wall vertically to see if it was any easier. It turns out to be neither harder nor easier really. The principle is exactly the same, except your datum becomes one of the walls rather than the ceiling.

You can pick either method depending what would suit you best. Take the red pill, or the blue pill...

Now we are going to screw the boards to the wall. If your wood is thick enough, you can just do what I did with the stud wall and screw to the timber. My timber was not thick enough, and I wanted to screw into the brick.

Obviously, it is easier to start at the bottom. But there is already a problem, your floor baton is not the right distance from the next, so your edges will not line up. Fear not, there is a solution!

Pick a side of the wall, left or right. Or centre if you prefer. I don't really care.

Now, on the baton that is the last one before the one on the floor, fit a screw part way into the baton on the centre line, leaving enough length to rest the board on. Now, strike a level line horizontally using your spirit level, and wind another screw in part way. Do this so you have four or five screws in a parallel line sticking out.

You can use these screws now to rest your board on.

This is easier if you have a friend to hold the board. I don't have any friends, so this bit was hard.

1. Drill pilot holes through the board, at intervals no greater than 16" horizontally, and vertically at whatever spacing your batons are at. Each pilot hole should be slightly smaller than the diameter of the shank of your screw (it will tell you what this is on the box) and go through into wood, not air! Your screws should be long enough to go through the hardiebacker, the wood, and well into the wall.
2. If your drill hits one of the screws you fitted the batons with, don't worry, just move over slightly to miss it and drill again.
3. Take the board down, and get your hammer drill. Drill through these pilot holes with your masonry bit (don't worry, it will go through, but if you are unsure or struggling just open up the holes a bit with a regular drill first).
4. Drill into the wall deep enough for your rawl plugs through the holes you just made. Set the depth gauge on your hammer drill (if it has one) to the length of the screw. That way, your screw will not be standing proud once you have wound it into the board.
5. Now, wind a rawl plug onto a long screw as far as it will go by hand, without distorting the plug.
6. Using a small hammer, gently drive the rawl plug into the wall through the hole you drilled in the baton. If the rawl plug has a collar around the top, either cut this off or use ones that do not have this. Once the rawl plug is at full depth, the screw should protrude no more than the thickness of the board, and ideally be almost flush with the wood.
7. Wind the screw out, which should leave the rawl plug behind in the wall.
8. Now, using your countersink drill, countersink all the holes you made in your hardiebacker board.
9. Offer the board back up, carefully realigning it with the holes you made before.
10. Screw your long screws into the holes, nice and tight.

Your first board is done! Now, add another board on top of your first, and repeat the above steps.

Once you reach the ceiling, you will have to cut a board. To do this, simply measure and mark, and with a straight edge score the board with your carbide scoring tool.

Place the board over a piece of timber positioned with the edge along the score, and pus down either side of the board hard. It will snap along the score mark, provided you scored deep enough and use enough force.

For now, ignore the gap at the floor, we will fill it in at the end using offcuts. This was especially important around the shower tray, as I needed the space to get the shower tray in before putting the lowest boards in.

I didn't stagger all my joints. It DOES make a positive difference to the end result if you do. The joints that I staggered tiled way nicer than the ones I didn't.

Take the offcut from the last board your put up (if you had to cut a board to reach the ceiling). If you did not have to cut a board, then cut a board in half.

Use this offcut to start your next column of boards, and repeat "Step 8: Get Those Boards Up!" - this will stagger your horizontal joints nicely.

You can see in my photographs, the end of a board is "floating" and not finishing on a wooden baton. This was a big problem and a pain to rectify. If you follow the steps I have listed to now, this should not happen! If you look closely you can see the timber I had to add to rectify the situation and give me something to secure the ends of the board to.

Once the boards are up, you will have offcuts left over. Use these to fill in the gaps at floor level, staggering the joints wherever you can.

The instructions for hardiebacker say you should fill the joints with some sort of cement. Since I was tiling with large format tiles, I didn't really see the point. However, I will say that just before I tiled, I decided to fill the joints with some tile adhesive and let that dry before I tiled it. I would recommend you follow the instructions given by the manufacturers!

On thing I have not really gone into is cabling for the lights. I am a qualified electrician, and I would not recommend anyone mess with electrics unless they know what they are doing!!! I did install cables after I fitted the batons and before I fitted the boards, so that I could have a light inside the shower.

Get a professional in to do your electrical work, building regulations will apply and you need to make sure that this part is done RIGHT. This goes double for the shower lights, electricity and showers do not mix. You absolutely must know what you are doing here. If you take electrical advice from the interwebz and zap yourself, know that I will be sitting here pointing and laughing at you.

The rest of the room did not require hardiebacker board, just plasterboard. The principle is the same, except plasterboard comes in sheets big enough to fit floor to celing. I simply screwed these to the existing bare stud walls, to replace the plasterboard / drywall that was there before.

I used waterproof plasterboard, because it is a bathroom and condensation and humidity will be present, and it wasn't that much more expensive.

Make sure you put the board on the right way! Plasterboard has a front and a back.

Use plasterboard screws, spaced every 6" at least. More is better. There's not much to say that has not been said already, the principle is the same as with hardiebacker.

I am afraid I have no pictures of this step. I thought I did, but I don't. I am very sorry.

The tanking kit came with instructions though.

The whole area that will be the shower enclosure needed tanking, floor to celling. The tanking will make whatever you apply it to absolutely waterproof.

The instructions said to first prime the surfaces with the primer it came with. Twice. So what I did was prime it. Twice. With a brush. Like it said in the instructions.

I let it dry, like in the instructions.

Then the instructions said to apply the rubbery tape stuff it came with to any joints in the boards, and also between the wall and the shower tray.

I applied the tape, but realised the tape would protrude from under the tiles in the shower tray, this would need trimming. I realised it would be easier to trim later on with a Stanley knife, after all had been tanked.

Next up was to apply at least two coats of tanking resin, so I applied three. With a clean brush. You have to really work it into the surfaces, make sure it gets right in there and creates a total seal.

Once this dried, I used a straight edge and a Stanley blade to cut away the protruding seal tape on the shower tray so you would not see it once the tiles were on.

This turned out to be, by far, the easiest part of the project.

Just like I did with the walls, I firstly screwed wooden batons to the ceiling. The spacing was not important, I just "stuck a few up".

It is easiest to run them across, rather than with, the joists above.

The existing ceiling was a fibreboard mess. To find the joists, I measured the spacing in the attic, and then used a screw driver to poke the ceiling until I found the joists.

For these batons, I could just wind screws straight in without pilot holes, so in they went!

Using packers and a spirit level, I levelled them all out.

Make sure you have a baton against the wall at both ends of the room, this is important later.

It was hard on the shoulders. There was lots of tea and cake.

Once the batons were ready, I made sure the cables for the lights were run where they needed to be using cable clips (use a professional if you are not competent with electrics!).

You need a friend to put the cladding up. I still didn't have any friends. So I used a ratcheting prop instead. I would not recommend this.

Find your friend.

Take a piece of cladding. Measure the ceiling at the point you are fitting this piece of cladding. It doesn't really matter which end of the room you start, and remember you are going to orientate the cladding across the batons, not with them.

Mark the cladding ready to cut.

The cladding will cut with a Stanley knife. Use a straight edge to guide the blade.

Offer the cladding up to the ceiling. The fit should be close, but not snug. You will tile up to the cladding, so a little gap is fine.

There is a tongue at one end, and a groove at the other. Orientate the piece so that the tongue faces the wall, and the tongue sticks out into the room. Make sure the piece fits. Depending on the cladding, you may need to trim the tongue off here. I did.

On the groove end there is a flap over the groove. This faces the ceiling, and this is what you will screw to the batons. Using very small screws (the ones I used were 10mm long) screw this flap to the batons.

You will have two options for securing the edge by the wall. Adhesive, or screws. I did not want to risk the screws showing after tiling, so I used contact adhesive (the brand I used is called "STICKS LIKE SH*T" - and it definitely does). I applied this liberally to the edge of the cladding on the side facing the baton, offered it up, and stood there like a muppet with the ratcheting prop and my hands pushing a piece of timber up to create an even pressure waiting for it to dry.

The adhesive only needs to hold until you tile, as your tiles will hold the ceiling edges once they are on the wall.

Rinse and repeat until the ceiling is clad. On the last piece of cladding, you will need to trim it again, and use adhesive to hold it to the ceiling again. Make sure the adhesive is well dried before you let go. Use a piece of timber to apply even pressure to the cladding while the adhesive goes off.

I was not going to move the sink or the toilet, so the pipes were already in place for these.

If you need to install pipes, this would be a good time to do it before you tile. Mock fit everything.

Make sure all water connections will fit and reach.

If you moved the sink and / or toilet, you will need to make sure you have something solid to anchor it to. I should really have mentioned this earlier. In fact, I shall go back and mention it. There, I mentioned it.

But this is your last chance saloon to put things right if they aren't. Pretend that the tiling is done, and look very carefully at how everything will fit together. This Instructable is really about the shower, but it is worth mentioning since you might be doing the whole bathroom.

Tiling is not very easy.

It takes time, and patience, and a degree of skill to get perfect. My tiling is not perfect. It is not just good, it is just good enough.

Watching guides like this really help

I used large format tiles, and decided I wanted to stagger my joints. I decided to do this in the hope it would hide some of my mistakes.

I started at one edge of a room, and that was a mistake, as you end up with odd slithers of tile in one corner.

Start in the middle of the room, and draw vertical line up the wall.

Plan the tiling pattern. I found it best to put two tiles on the wall in the horizontal, and then put one tile on top of those bridging the join. From there, every tile I added on the bottom, I added another above it. As soon as I had two tiles on the row above, I started the next row on top of those two tiles, and so on.

You can spread the adhesive on the wall or on the tiles (called dot & dab). I spread it nice and thick on the walls.

Mix tile adhesive little and often, using your mains drill and mixing paddle.

Use the appropriate tile spacers for your tiles.

Regularly measure, and check that you are level and flat. A rubber mallet helps to gently tap tiles that need adjustment.

Sad story time, in italics, so if you can't be bothered reading skip past.

I tiled this bathroom on Christmas Day. I was away working, and the job ended earlier than expected. The client bent over backwards to get us home on Christmas Eve, which everyone was happy about. Except me. It was the height of COVID, the UK was in full lockdown, no travel, no gatherings, no parties.

My wife had taken our daughter to go and "Bubble" with her parents, 800 miles away, as that was allowed within the rules. Single parents could go and move in with their support group, and as I was working away for a few weeks, she needed the support. Sadly, this meant that she was away when I got home. It was late on Christmas Eve, I had no food in the house, no shops were open, and there was no way to get food.

I had bought a huge bottle of honey Jack Daniels from the duty free in the airport on my way home, and some Toblerone. I got home, slept, and the next morning in my empty house on Christmas, decided to start tiling since I had everything I needed to do it. Lunch was Toblerone, washed down with honey Jack, and so I continued to do tiles. Dinner was also Toblerones with mah friend, Jack, and my tea breaks was all Jacks with more Jacks, nomnomnom. It wasn't so bads, it was a beautiful day and the birds were swaying and the trees were singing and the tiles was getting more and more easierer. The wall was going all wibblewobble but that was ok cos the floor was wibblewobbles too and the tiles just wibbled and wobbled with it.

The next morning, in the time between waking up and the hangover goblins jumping out from behind the furniture to mug me, I went to look at my work. Given how inebriated I was, I did an ok job mostly. But I did realise I should probably move where I planned to fit the radiator to cover up where I finished tiling and things had gone extra wibblywobbly...

Don't operate power tools while drunk. It is NOT cool, NOT clever, and NOT funny. How I did not hurt myself, I have no idea.

The "Big Clinker" tile cutter was a godsend. I waited until the end to do all the odd cuts of tiles, so I could cut them all in one go. To use it, you simply put the tile on the cutter bed, line it up, measure the size you need the tile to be on the wall, move the tile along the guide to that measurement, pull the handle down, push the handle forward to score the tile and press down at the end to snap it. It was almost magic!

The wet saw was equally useful, if a little noisy and messy, for cutting the tiles around the window, where I needed to cut awkward shapes or bevel a tile. To use this, you simply put water in it, switched it on, WEAR EYE PROTECTION!!!!! and feed the tile through the cutter where you need the cut. There really is not much to it. Mind your fingers, go steady, don't use it while drunk and consider your neighbours as, like I said, it makes a hell of a noise.

I was left with about 1/8 tile width at the top of the walls to the ceiling. I pressed the tile up into the ceiling cladding a little, especially where the ends had been glued. This meant that the ceiling was now supported by the tiles. Because I took care with levelling the batons when I did the ceiling, everything looked nice and square. Be careful not to mark the ceiling with your tiles, the cladding is a little fragile.

The tiling in the shower was no different to the rest of the room. The tanked surfaces took to the adhesive just like the manufacturers said it would, and I was super pleased with the end result....

I used a diamond hole saw to hot the holes for the shower mixer. This did need very careful measurements, and two attempts before I got it right.

Follow the instructions carefully, and go steady. A very slow drill speed, and lots of water are key. And a very steady hand. Wash the groove it cuts out regularly with liberal amounts of water and do not let the bit overheat. It is easier to drill the back of the tile than the front, as the front is glazed and the drill will try and wander. HOWEVER, if you drill from the back, the bit WILL chip the glaze when it comes through. For me this did not matter as the shower mixer has a face plate to hide the sins. But it is something to consider.

Once your tiles are well set, you can remove your tile spacers. Be careful to remove them all, those buggers have a habit of hiding and jumping out at you when you come to grout.

Grouting is easy peasy. You just mix the grout to a fairly loose consistency (following the instructions on the packet) and spread it into the tile gaps with a grout spreading tool. I actually just used a window cleaning squeagy. It had a rubber strip on one side and a neoprene strip on the other, and it worked a treat for getting the grout into the tile gaps. Keep ramming it into the gaps until no more will go in.

Use a damp cloth to wipe the tiles down regularly.

Once the grout dries, use a scourer to clean the tiles and get rid of the excess grout. This is tedious and labourious, but it has to be done. When you clean the tiles, and come back later, you will see that the tiles are still dirty. This time, use a dry cloth and that should see them stay clean.

This is where I permanently fitted teh bathroom furniture. And dropped my sink. Oops. Be careful when you do this, folks!

Now we can seal all the edges with sealer. Using your caulking gun (after you have run around the house shouting "PEW PEW PEW!" and shooting everything, of course!), and the best quality sanitary silicone you can lay your hands on (anti-mould stuff is essential in a bathroom), we set to work.

Practice a little before you attempt this. You need a steady hand and a steady squeeze to give a steady pump. Oncey you are confident, you can set to work.

I had to seal the shower tray, and the ceiling where it meets the tiles.

There are two methods you can employ here.

Method 1

1. Mask off the areas either side of where you are going to lay the bead (where you don't want the silicone to stick) with masking tape.
2. Apply a bead along the edges you want to seal.
3. Wet your finger, press down on one end of the bead and run your finger along it to push the bead into the gap, wiping and rewetting your finger regularly.
4. While the silicone is still wet, carefully remove your masking tape.

Method 2

1. Do not mask off.
2. Apply the bead along the edges you want to seal.
3. Using a spray bottle filled with water and washing up liquid, spray a mist over the bead and surrounding area.
4. Wet your finger, press down on one end of the bead and run your finger along in a smooth motion to push the bead into the gap, wiping and rewetting your finger regularly.
5. The silicone will not stick where the washing up liquid has been sprayed.

The shower door I used was a sliding door, and was very easy to fit. It came with full instructions and guides.

All I had to do was drill the tiles with an appropriate sized diamond bit in the spots the guide told me to, fix the frame with the screws provided, and hang the doors. There really was nothing to it at all! I didn't take photos because it was over before it really started, I was amazed at how easy it was.

I fitted the lights (get a professional to do this!!!), laid the floor (these were just vinyl tiles, and I won't cover that here), and enjoyed a hot shower.

I had not installed the kickboards (the boards to go around the bottom of the wall) when I took the photos. But to install these, they simply screwed to the existing timber that was there. They are white and boring and nothing special (a bit like me!). I shall get more photos and update.

*UPDATE*

I added photos of the finished project.

The things to consider:

Make sure the door fits the gap. It seems obvious, but you are far better to make the gap to the correct size for the door you want than to find a door that will fit the gap once you have made it. Plan well ahead!

Make sure the door is vertical and plumb.

Once the door is in, it is a good idea to seal it to the tiles with clear silicone sealer.

I appreciate this instructable is long, and not for everyone, and doesn't really tell you "How" to fit a bathroom, but I hope it inspires some of you to give things a go, and if you do, helps you plan ahead from start to finish and outlines some of the pitfalls.

Things I would do differently?

I would start tiling from the middle of the wall, not one end.

I would set the shower tray in concrete, rather than on a wooden plinth.

DO NOT OPERATE POWER TOOLS DRUNK.

DO NOT TILE WHILE DRUNK, no matter HOW lonely you are.

I should have done this myself in the first place. I am working on a time machine to go back in time and do just that. Once I have a working prototype, I will write an instructable about it. Although, that would mean that this instructable would never get written, and I would not be inspired to build a time machine, which means I would not go back in time to do the bathroom myself which means I would have hired the idiots to do my bathroom after all...

Maybe I did already invent a time machine? This instructable is almost proof that I did.