I am going to replace my fiberglass shower.
Which would you recommend: Replacing it with another fiberglass insert, tile, or Swanstone panels?
The previous owner apparently died her hair in the shower, and it left stains on the shower floor that no matter what, I cannot seem to get rid of it.
Thanks for your help.
Kadee
Definitely not tile. It's more work to install and more work to maintain.
Fiberglass is good and fairly cheap, easy to install and minimal maintenance effort.
Solid surface materials are also very nice and you can get kits that contain all the materials needed to do a shower. They are more work to install, but like fiberglass are minimal effort to maintain.
Kadee:
The biggest gun in the arsenal when it comes to removing stains is a process called "procking", but which goes by many names depending on who you talk to.
To prock a stain out, you soak a WHTE cotton rag in bleach and squeeze it out only so that it doesn't drip. You want it to be almost at the point of dripping bleach, but not quite. You set that bleach soaked rag over the stain and cover with either a bowl or CLEAR plastic, and then tape the edges of the plastic down with masking tape or weigh them down with a length of steel chain of any sort. The idea here is just to prevent the bleach from evaporating. Leave that on for a half hour, and see if it does any good. If it seems to be taking the stain out, then leave it on for another hour and check again, and gradually increase the time between checks until you're leaving wet bleach on the stain over night.
Now, if that doesn't take the stain out, nothing will.
Try the bleach on an inconspicuous spot first, probably in the stained area to ensure that if the bleach takes the colour out of the fiberglass tub, it's in an area that was damage by the stain anyway.
You should be aware that you might not be able to replace the fiberglass tub insert with another. Some of those fiberglass tubs are too large to fit through a door way even with removing the door and the wood door moldings. Replacing them would require removing exteriorwalls like they so when a super obese person has to be taken to the hospital.
If it were me, and replacing the fiberglass tub wasn't feasible, I'd probably go with the Swanstone/Corian plexiglas panels simply because they're the least maintenance. If you're willing to seal the grout yourself, then ceramic tiling is a good option, but only if you're willing to maintain the tiling by maintaining the grout sealer. Maintaining ceramic tiling is an entire subject that you would need to learn at least a little bit about.
The only problem with the Plexiglas panels comes when you want to replace the mildewed silicone caulk on them. In that case, you can't use a steel razor to cut the old caulk off. You can buy plastic razor blades at Lee Valley to get much of the silicone off, but you'd still need to use some tools that could take the silicone off without damaging the Plexiglas, and about the only one I can think of are plastic razor blades or plastic ice scrapers for car windshields. Any metal scraping tools would likely scratch up the Plexiglas/Swanstone/Corian panels.
| I am going to replace my fiberglass shower. | | Which would you recommend: Replacing it with another fiberglass insert, | tile, or Swanstone panels? |
That's a bit like saying you're buying a new car and asking what you should buy. It depends on what you want, what you need, what you can afford, etc. We don't even know what you have now. I'd suggest you do some research and talk to whoever is going to do the work, to compare pros and cons.
Depends on budget and desired end result. I'd go with Swanstone over the fiberglass, but my first choice is ceramic tile.
In the past year I renovated both our bathrooms. I used Swanstone bases, a 32 x 60 in one and a 34 x 48 in the other. The walls are porcelain tile. To keep maintenance low, I used epoxy grout. It never needs sealing and is much more waterproof than regular sand grout.
I also used glass doors and the inside glass has a coating that repels water. After a shower, just take a squeegee and it is clean.
I also used Swanstone for the sinks and sat them on Bertch vanities. Both showers have both a handheld and a rainhead. We chose Kohler faucets and diverters.
Fiberglass is cheap, quick, easy. Swanstone has a better choice of finishes and, IMO, a better look Tile add elegance, rich colors, most durable. Most expensive.
I also did the other walls in tile about 50" high. Easy to clean, looks great. There is a 3" accent band around the room also.
You can spend $500 for a cheap enclosure or $15,000 or more on a full renovation.
Sounds effective.
When I bought my house, the shower stall, made of some kind of plastic, or maybe fiberglass, had a dirty bottom. The guy didn't dye his hair but I guess he washed dirt off himself. He had cleaned it before leaving, but one effort or even a weekly effort was not enough. Hard to clean because it's intentionally made rough so that people don't fall down.
I used some well known cleaner, can't remember what, but I had to apply it and then brush 10 times, or maybe even 20. I did it whenver I had a few minutes. Eventually I got the whole thing clean. I continued using it and now it's just as dirty as it was when I moved in.
But now it's my dirt, not his, and that makes all the difference.
Micky
The shower pan is dirty because hard dirt particles have been embedded into the relatively soft plastic by your feet.
Use a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (or no-name equivalent) to clean the shower pan and you should find that takes the dirt out much more effectively than scrubbing with a brush.
The Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is actually a foam called Basotect foam made by the BASF company. It was originally used to make seat cushions for air planes because if it's very light weight. It's still used to make sound deadening panels for recording studios. It's very effective at cleaning because if you look at the foam under an electron microscope:
.. it has microscopically small bristles that can get into tiny grooves that brush bristles are too large to get into. THAT is why Magic Erasers work so well at cleaning surfaces.
Don't scrub your shower pan hard with a Magic Eraser. The melamine it's made of is quite hard and so a Magic Eraser can be quite abrasive and can dull the gloss finish on your shower pan, leaving it looking dull. Better to scrub the shower pan floor gently, but moving the Magic Eraser in different directions over the dirt you want to remove.
In the above micrograph, a "micron" is one millionth of a meter, or
1/1000 of a millimeter. A human hair is about 100 microns in diameter, so Basotect foam melamine fibers are about 1/10th of that size or about twice the diameter of a red blood cell. They're about half the size needed for the unaided human eye to see, which is about 20 microns in diameter.I've found the best shower cleaner is Bar Keepers Friend.
Obviously, your water deposits may vary.
+1
I'm with you, except for the epoxy grout. Urethane grout is quickly over taking epoxy in the professional world. More "user" friendly than epoxy, but not as friendly as the old stand by grout, which needs regular sealing. Urethane also does not need sealing.
Not familiar with it, but certainly worth checking out.
I think people get scared away from regular portland cement based grouts because they supposedly require "regular sealing". I tiled all 21 of the bathrooms in my apartment block and used portland cement based grout on all of them. I find that if I seal that grout once every 3 or 4 tenants, or about once every 10 years, the grout stays clean.
I use an acrylic film forming sealer on my grout sold under the name "Grout Sealer" made by a company called "Glaze 'N Seal". There's a hardware store in California that I ordered it from online and imported it into Canada. If you can draw a straight line, you can apply grout sealer to grout with a brush.
Every time I seal the grout in a bathroom, I give it three coats of grout sealer, and that lasts longer than 10 years. I know that because on most of my bathrooms the grout sealer on the grout actually looks yellowish because there's actually too much grout sealer on the grout. Still, I'd much rather have that problem than mildew on my grout, and every prospective tenant I've ever met would as well.
I'm just saying that sealing grout really isn't the chore that some people make it out to be. If you can afford a weekend once every 10 to
15 years to apply three coats of sealer to your grout, your sealed portland cement grout will last as long as any epoxy grout.And, obviously, the more grout you have, the more grout you have to seal. So, don't pick a mosaic tile for your bathroom shower walls. I find that by using 6X8 tiles in the landscape orientation you get the best of all worlds:
And, no one can tell me that my tenants take as good care of my bathroom tub/shower tiling than a homeowner would take care of his own bathroom tub/shower tiling. Most of my tenants wouldn't even bother turning on their bathroom ceiling fan after a shower (because it makes noise), so my tiling has to stand up better to abuse than the tiling done in your average house.
I used 8 x 10 tiles and I do have a mosaic trim strip. The smaller size may be best for DIY, but I had a pro who is a perfectionist and step one was getting the walls perfect so there were no bumps, lumps, or curves to work around. I was able to get the right guy at the right time at the right price. I'd never trust a Home Depot for a job like that.
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