Self Leveling this DISASTER Slab (Using Drywall Screws?)

again welcome back to the channel i'm paul with studpack in our previous video you saw us install our schluter drain and our curb and install all these lights so now we have wonderful light to work with i can see so so much better so let me take you down here and walk you through today's project we're going to be installing our pre-slope our dry pack our mortar bed it has lots of different names but it's basically a sloped mortar bed that'll get covered with kerdi fabric our tile will go directly on that and it's going to establish the slope to our drain now i set up the laser earlier and so that beam is three quarters of an inch above our flange which is perfect for the tile we're using this is our floor tile we want about a quarter inch of slope if i go to the longest dimension here that's almost three feet from the corner to here and our longest dimension perpendicular to the wall is over two feet so i'm i'm liking the three quarter inch of slope over that distance so now what we're going to do we can turn our laser off and we won't have to rely on it i've got my sharpie line all the way around now schluter makes a foam shower base it works better if when your drain is more in the center of the shower the other issue we have is that over here in this corner we're an inch and a quarter from the slab to our laser and then in this corner we're almost at two so the slab is pitching this way if i put schluter's pan on here it would not work because it's going to be pitched i would have to make this level beforehand it's just easier to use the dry pack so let's go outside mix up our thinset and our dry pack mud and come back and we'll get started [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so dude that was 110 pounds you just carried in yeah that was 50 yards maybe i don't know i'll be right back i'm gonna go try out for the nfl and and some steps too alright guys check it out we have our thin set mixed up into a slurry and what we're gonna do with that we're gonna use this old paintbrush you could use a trowel a sponge an old rag anything and we're gonna and we're gonna put it on here and it's going to bond our dry pack to this slab that dry pack doesn't have enough moisture in it to bond to this concrete you would basically be like taking this tile and setting it on there and expecting it to stay there's no way [Music] and what we're basically making with this is one big concrete tile right so this slurry this thinset slurry is going to bond this to this now usually you'll have a curve that goes all the way across and you can do the whole thing at once there's no way i'll be able to reach these back corners from over here so i'm going to park myself here do from where my left hand is around here then i'm going to come on the outside and finish this corner where i'm kneeling so the process is put our slurry down we're going to build our dry pack up to our line that we put on the wall with our laser and then i made all these plywood screeds i know they're wood i know it's not the right material but this is a one off and i don't have aluminum screeds and we've done it this way before that plywood is going to stay straight long enough for us to use it as a screed so this is the shortest one i needed five i needed six jordan right from i think 14 to 39 and five inch increments i think that works so the 14 will go from here to there i'll switch to the longer one go a little bit more and then and then change as i need to to span from the flange to our wall so let's get started get this thing knocked out huh [Music] so [Music] so [Music] um [Music] alrighty guys a pre-slope is done it came out fantastic i'm really happy with it you kind of saw my technique first thing we did was put our laser line here you don't have a laser just establish that line with a level and you really need to do that there are plenty of good techniques on youtube check them out once i had it where i liked it i used my finishing trowel to get it smooth got my level about half a bubble at a level which is perfect and then i would even get down here and make sure i didn't have any any low spots oh man i'm really happy with that our next step in this shower is to waterproof the pan we're going to use kerdi membrane just like we did on the walls after we do that we're going to get out here and put self-leveling compound on this floor but it's getting late we're going to do that tomorrow so we'll see you then hey gang it's the next day i've been hard at work on this floor getting it ready for our self-leveling underlayment jordan's going to show you the floor what i've been doing i'm going to take you through each step and show you what i did the first thing i did i wanted to know how level or outer level this floor was from our shower video and take a look at the pan it's drying nicely in there but back from that video we knew that this just this area was a quarter inch out so i didn't have high hopes for this area so i got my roto hammer with a quarter inch bit and i drilled a series of holes in the slab i didn't measure didn't use my laser beam or anything like that nice i uh just randomly drilled holes about every two and a half feet apart to give me a grid and i put in my favorite plastic concrete anchor any plastic anchor will work for this and then i put drywall a drywall screw in each anchor i set up my laser on this counter because it's a kind it's a consistent benchmark it'll never change and using this strip of plywood i just went around on the concrete making marks trying to get an idea of what this slab was doing that told me that this was the high corner so i started in here i put this screw an eighth of an inch above the slab and i made two marks on that blue tape you see them so then i went to every screw and adjusted it up or down until my laser beam was in between those two lines once i did the whole floor i went around with blue tape and i wrote on the blue tape how far above the concrete is the top of the screw so you can see right there that one's 3 8 then as we go this way towards the master bedroom 5 16 5 8 3 4 so a three-quarter inch drop between this screw and the one in this corner now in this toilet room the laser beam won't project around this door so i just use my level one end on top of this screw and the other end on top of that screw and adjusted the screw until it was level so again zero here three quarter there i was hoping it was the other way i was hoping it would be thinnest where we have to transition to our wood floors and thickest in here where it's the worst but it's of course that's not the way it panned out so once i had all that done i started working on my dams for the self-leveling underlayment i just bought a sheet of white insulating foam from the home center cut it into one inch strips and attached it to the floor with just using some painters caulk i use the alex a lot of people call this alex i don't know why that's a portmanteau of acrylic latex so it should be pronounced alex right what's a portmanteau check it out yeah i don't know it's a combination of two or more words microsoft there's hundreds of them in our vocabulary interesting yep so over here at the door to the master bedroom i originally had put a dam right here but then i realized if i have a quarter inch half an inch of underlayment right here how am i going to transition to this wood the owners don't want any steps or transitions and that tile is going to be perfect just like that by the time we get the thin set under it right here yeah so what i decided to do was to move the dam back to the toe kick on the cabinet and i will basically ramp the tile down from here to here and i don't think you'll ever be able to feel it but what i'm gonna have to do is i'm gonna have to have a grout joint obviously here and so this tile will ramp down to the wood and then this tile will be completely on our underlayment our next tile is going to be we haven't determined our layout yet but we will have to make a cut here so that this tile can be on the underlayment and that this piece can ramp down you'll never notice you never notice and then what's going to happen over here the tile is going to be this way so we'll wrap up just slightly and at some point there'll be a grout joint all the way across here and then we'll go back flat so i think that's going to work out great so let me talk a little bit more about this dam under the toe kick i i didn't need it so i just caught right there and then i put this damn here again i caulked here and then over here on the right i went all the way around that pocket door with the foam because i didn't want that underlaying it going under the door and then under the cabinet so it's all blocked off you can get a pretty good shot right there over here on this plumbing wall the bottom plate was cut to accommodate for the drain and the water line so there's a big gap there so i did that and then i needed a piece over here where it's really bad can you see how wavy it is here that's where that brick was showing from the old footing and i went around the pocket door here around the front of our tub deck and then i just caught from here to there after that was done and dried overnight i mixed up them a pie primer tea one to one ratio with water mix it for two minutes put it on with a paint roller that was over two hours ago it's nice and dry and it was interesting jordan it really kind of highlighted some of the aspects in this slab that we never saw before like right here you can see that these two are these are two different slabs or this is a saw cut i don't know and you can see an outline here of an old cabinet an outline here of an old cabinet this has all been patched with concrete maybe when they added this they had to tie into the sewer for the vanity and the shower but anyway we're about to cover all that up so as you can see we still have all the screws in the concrete my plan was to use the tops of those screws to level the self underlayment we're going to pour it to the top of that screw but that won't work anymore because i would need almost an inch thick of underlayment right here to have a level floor and then basically this would be a ramp down to this floor i didn't like that so what we're going to do we're going to take the screws out and we're going to pour the self-leveling underlayment for coverage my goal is to have about a quarter inch over by the toilet and about a quarter inch here so instead of having a level floor we're going to have a flat floor which is going to pay off big time dividends when we start tiling this thing and it's going to make it look beautiful so these screws have served their purpose we're not going to use them now so we're going to remove them and start mixing up that self-leveling compound and get this thing poured [Music] [Music] do [Music] and that looks awesome yeah dude i was so anxious about that that looks freaking sweet yep worked beautifully it's like glass yeah as a homeowner you know when they come home they're gonna see this and i just think it gives a feeling of professionalism and that it's being done right right peace of mind and that took exactly four bags right exactly four bags perfect this was our staging area we didn't want to mix this outside and then carry a 50-plus pound bucket of liquid through this beautiful home so we did it right here the other thing we did i figured about four bags i actually bought six but we brought in four buckets and we put in our five and a quarter quarts of water in each bucket so it was ready to go we didn't have to think about water we could just dump one bucket and go right into mixing the next one and that worked great we probably did all that in less than 10 minutes i'd say yeah easily yeah so i'll talk about these dams a little bit now obviously this one's going to get removed but the ones around the perimeter we'll just take our buzz saw and flush cut that foam off at the top of our self leveling compound and then of course the tile will cover that one inch of foam would be perfect all right gang that's gonna be a wrap for this video we're really excited this step is done if you like the video be sure to like the video for us really appreciate that leave us a comment leave us a question we'll try to answer it if we can and if you have a tip on how you do it leave that tip below in the comments so we can read it and others can read it and please consider subscribing to the channel if you haven't already we appreciate all the support and we'll see you on the next you

Channel: Stud Pack

Views: 637,555

Rating: 4.9398875 out of 5

Keywords: studpack, stud pack, self leveling compound, how to self level a floor, how to use self leveling compound, bathroom remodel, diy bathroom, diy bathroom renovation, bathroom renovation, shower renovation, tub renovation

Id: dpzunKcjED4

Length: 18min 30sec (1110 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 01 2021