Replacing shower walls

[cal2269]

I am looking to replace the vinyl wallpaper that surrounds the shower pan. Any ideas where I can find the correct material needed?This is for a 1992 Itasca, if there is no such item, ant ideas on replacing the shower would be helpful.

Thank you

Edited August 21, 2009 by cal2269

[turtle]

Both of the Toyota RVs I've owned had molded showers of either fiberglass or ABS. They were/are GREAT...... the only way to go in my estimation is a 1 piece or 2 piece solid molded shower. These CAN'T leak.

I'm not sure if you could find something like that for your Winnie as both mine were 18 footers and were small shower/head combinations.

If you are going to replace the walls you may want to do it with malemine tile board (MDF). This is home shower board. It is about as water resistant as you are going to get. If you want to take it a step further you can get sheets of ABS and glue that over the malemine. Once the ABS is caulked it would be 100% water proof as long as you keep it caulked and sealed.

You can get malemine shower board in a variety of colors and patterns from plain white to tile impressed to pretty patterns. There are several brand names of this product that you can go with if you want good quality such as Barker Board and Georgia Pacific.

I used a plain white malemine for the ceiling when I rebuilt the interior of the diesel. Looks great and it is won't "punk up" if it gets wet.

[WME]

Go to Home Depot and ask to see some FRP, Fiber Reinforced Plastic. Its the stuff that you see on the walls of a lot of commercial rest rooms.

I redid my shower with that. I just removed the wallpaper and used the recommended glue to attach the FRP to the wall. Used some of the original trim and some caulking and its been good for 5 years. Its 100% water proof, and everything else resistant.

[bajadulce]

Good suggestions. Is that sheet from home depot around $32? Pure white with "bumps". I've looked at that a few times while in that isle and wondered how easy it was to work with. It definitely looks 100% waterproof.

[WME]

Good suggestions. Is that sheet from home depot around $32? Pure white with "bumps". I've looked at that a few times while in that isle and wondered how easy it was to work with. It definitely looks 100% waterproof.

Thats the stuff. With a hairdryer you can form it around a 6" radius, I cut it with an old fashion set of sheet metal shears, snip, snip. It comes in white, dove gray and almond

Hows your "pop off" camper conversion going???

[bajadulce]

The camper has sit for awhile as I have been pretty busy this summer. Today however, I went out and bought a sheet of this FRP @ home depot! I've been rummaging through junkyards for old fiberglass campers to chop into panels, as I've run out of scrap material for my project, but without much success. I needed to fill the front windows + the pass-trough as well as a roof eventually.

There may be some tricks to fabricating your own sheets, but in my experience and the techniques I've picked up, the fiberglass always needs a plastic filler (bondo) for the top coat. This is fine for scabbing in sections as well as seams etc, but no way is this going to work for large sections. Typically fiberglass shells are shot in a mold with the gel coat being applied first I assume? Trying to build these in the opposite direction would seem to require too much labor.

Now this FRP is pretty flimsy stuff to substitute as a section of fiberglass shell for a camper, but I thought I'd give it a try as a "gel coat" Basically I roughed up the texture side of the sheet so that I could laminate 3 heavy layers of fiberglass matte to the panel. A sample experiment showed that this laminated well and made a huge impact in terms of the rigidity. I'm going to give it a shot covering the front windows this week. My panel is setting up in the garage right now! The backside of the sheet (smooth side) is now the exterior and the 3 layers of glass are laminated to the original textured side. The factory backside of the FRP panel isn't perfectly smooth, but it's a lot closer than I could ever fabricate on my own. With some wet sanding + a couple layers of primer and paint I think it will turn out pretty decent... I hope. I'll try to get some pictures up in my thread someday here soon.

Thnx for posting about the shower panels. I had looked at them before but passed them off as too thin and not rigid enough. I revisited the idea probably only because you mentioned them. So if this doesn't work out, I'll be blaming you of course.

btw.. nice looking paint scheme on your rig in your avatar. That something you've done recently?

[nibs]

You can make panels flat or curved by taking a sheet of formica / arborite and laying it on a table, paint the surface with PVA mould release or mold release wax, then apply gel coat and lay up a panel with glass, cut it with scissors while it is green but not fully cured, it will take a fairly sharp curve while green. You can also make filler by mixing micro ballons and or micro fibers with gel coat. That is how fiberglass boat repairs are done.

[WME]

Thnx for posting about the shower panels. I had looked at them before but passed them off as too thin and not rigid enough. I revisited the idea probably only because you mentioned them. So if this doesn't work out, I'll be blaming you of course.

btw.. nice looking paint scheme on your rig in your avatar. That something you've done recently?

Coat some plastic 3/4" hose with mold release and then glass them in on the back side. Remove when mostly set. The ribs will make the layup Very stiff.

My Toy isn't painted it has 2 color side paneling. After I get some side strips it will look even better.

[bajadulce]

@ fabricating a fiberglass sheet from scratch:

Ahh so that's how you lay up a sheet without a mold. Seems pretty obvious once you know how it's done. I'm going to have to do that some day just to say I did. Wonder how many layers of glass it takes before you have something substantial? Adding a few layers of glass to the plastic sheet seemed to only marginally effect its thickness. I think I've heard of surfboard guys describe using 30 layers of glass for some of the fins they've made? That seem a bit much?

I've chopped up glass before to make filler, but never heard of micro balloons. Sounds pretty high-tech and extremely light. I know surfboard repair guys always talk about a powder called cabosil or something like that. Prob very similar.

@ reinforced ribs:

I glassed the sheet to three stringers to give it a little more support + have something to glue to for the interior panel. Added some pics in the ongoing breadbox thread tonight. The hose idea sounds like a good one tho. I've never used any mold release as mentioned. Probably a lot of applications for this type of setup.

@ colors:

Oh I see now. Did the cab come that color as well? Looks sharp regardless. I really like the color scheme.

[WME]

The cab is 2 tone also.

[Wayne & Irene]

I also used the FRP panel material from Home Depot. I replaced the shower walls/ceiling and the entire back wall of the motorhome bathroom. It turned out great and wasn't too hard to do. While I had the shower pan out I used a wood rot preventative product on the floor and some of the lower wall areas in the toilet and behind the shower where the wallboard was a bit soft and easy to pull off. i did that as far up as i needed until i reached wall board that was very solid. then i glued the frp over everything. i made cardboard pattern pieces and trimmed them until they were perfect and then used them to make really good FRP pieces without having any trimming and fussing to make them fit nicely.