How to Tile a Basement Shower

Hey, it’s Natalie, from The Creative Mom. I am so excited to show you how to build and tile a basement shower. I’ll walk you through every step of the process from sheetrock, to shower pan, to tile. Installing the shower is the first thing we did in our basement bathroom. To follow along with the whole bathroom process, you can check out my blog, The Creative Mom.

And if you are wondering what is in our drain, it’s a baseball- the perfect solution to keep fumes from coming up through the drain. Once we have water going in the shower, it will sit in the P-trap and prevent fumes. Until then, we found that a baseball did the trick.

We just felt like the Kerdi kit really solved all of our problems. The Home Depot also sells waterproofing options like Red Gard and PVC shower liners, if this Kerdi system doesn’t give you all the happy feels like it did us. I’m not going to walk you through the install process of the Kerdi shower kit, because Schluter has such a great step-by-step video, that I think it’s best to follow that video very closely for best results.

Then I started laying in the back corner, working my way across the back wall and then forward. You will spread a layer of thinset with the notched side of your trowel, then lay your tile. Take your time on these penny tiles. Because you don’t use spacers, you’ll need to be very deliberate and careful to make sure everything stays straight and level. You’ll also need to cut the tile to fit your drain. We used an angle grinder to cut the tiles so they fit perfectly around the drain.

Make sure you get the right thickness of tile edging- our penny tiles were 1/2″ thick, while our wall tiles were 3/8″ thick, so we had to get different tile edging to match the tile we were using. We set the Schluter tile edging with our thinset, and then tiled right up to the edges with our penny tile. I think the Schluter tile edging makes all the difference in the way the tile looks when you’re done.

You’ll want to start on the wall you look at straight on, then move to your side walls, that way you won’t see your grout lines. So after we got our first row done on our back wall, we moved to our side walls. Since we didn’t really care if the tiles on those walls were centered, we started with half of a tile and worked our way outward. Then on the next row, we started with a whole tile. We continued that pattern upward.

The shelf actually sits on the tile below it, and the tile above it slides behind the shelf, so it stays put! When we got to the row where we wanted the shelf, we installed the shelf first, with a layer of thinset, then tiled the row meeting up to it. That way we knew exactly what size to cut our tile. We did have to cut a couple of tiles in sort of an L-shape to have it fit up to the shelf, but the coolest part is that the tile slides in behind the shelf, so you can’t see the edge of the cut tile behind it.

Our bottom shelf was installed about 2 feet from the shower floor, and the top shelves just shy of 4 feet from the shower floor.
We were big fans of these shelves.

Continue tiling until you get to the height you want your shower. Since our basement ceilings aren’t very high, we knew we wanted our shower to go to the ceiling. We had to cut the last tile to fit up to the ceiling. If you aren’t tiling up to the ceiling, I suggest finishing off your edge with Schluter tile edging.

After I paint the ceiling, I will apply a layer of caulk where my ceiling meets my tile. That way, we know the seam is watertight and we don’t have to worry about water or vapor getting behind the tile at the top. You can get caulk that matches your grout, so that will help it look really nice at the top. But like I said, that will wait until after I paint the ceiling, which I didn’t do yet, because I knew I would probably get grout and thinset on it.

When you are grouting, you want to start with your walls first, then go to your floor. Basically you smear the grout on with your float and make sure it smooshes into your spaces between the tiles. Then you go behind and wipe the excess grout with a clean, wet sponge. You’ll want to make sure you keep your water and your sponge clean. Once you have your tile pretty clean, you can let the grout sit for a few hours and cure. Then go back with a clean, wet sponge and give it a really good wipe down. If you didn’t get the Fusion Pro grout, you will have to seal it after the grout cures completely.

Make sure you grout right up to your Schluter tile edging. You’ll want to make sure there aren’t any gaps at all. Also, the grout will stick to the Schluter tile edging, so make sure to wipe it down really well while it’s wet, or you’ll spend a lot of time scraping dried grout off later. Don’t ask me how I know that! haha!

And make sure you clean your corners out really well. Your grout will tend to pool in the corners, so use a putty knife or the corner of your float to get the excess grout out of the corners and out from under the shelves.

After you’ve installed your shower head, check for leaks in the fittings, let your grout cure for at least a day or two, and enjoy your new basement shower!

This was the first step in our basement bathroom install. Now we are ready for paint, flooring, vanity and a toilet!

Thanks for following along on this project. You can find more DIY’s like this, as well as see all of the finishing touches for this bathroom on my blog, The Creative Mom. You can also follow me on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.