How to: Disassemble your shower trim

Okay. Someone asked for a tutorial. Here is the best I can do.



Begin disassembling your shower by pulling out all of the rubber braces from both the inside and outside of the shower. If your shower does not have these, I guess you just omit this … and maybe find another tutorial because I can’t tutor you on a subject I don’t understand myself. ;)



Once you have removed all the rubber braces things, you’ll want to carefully begin unscrewing the different pieces from one another. WARNING: This is a two person job, minimum. No exceptions. You cannot do this yourself. Even if you are Superman.



We started at the back corner of the shower, opposite the door, pulled the top section off, and then kind of followed an obvious order on what to take apart next. PLEASE make a note of where each piece goes and how it fits back together.
There are so many pieces … and it’s difficult to put the puzzle back together once you are done. Difficult. Not impossible, just difficult.

Once you have all of the pieces taken apart and your shower is totally disassembled, you’ll need to start soaking. Soaking? Yes. Soaking. Our solvent of choice was Xylene (you can find it at Home Depot). That stuff eats through plastic cups in 3 minutes flat. This is good news … cause you’ll have an awful lot of silicone caulking that will need to be soaked and eaten up by the Xylene. Soak all the parts with silicone in the Xylene for about an hour. Then, it will be loose enough to scrap right off with a razor blade.

After you have successfully removed every shred of silicone (and I mean every shred – paint will not stick to silicone … NOTHING sticks to silicone), you can begin sanding. Use a very fine grit sand paper and lightly sand all of the surfaces of the trim.

Clean and dry all trim pieces … and then … rig up a ridiculous apparatus in the garage so that you can begin spraying all the pieces. Your ghetto rig job should look something like this:



(Don’t judge me based on my garage right now. We are in the middle of re-doing our entire house … by ourselves. This is our workshop for now.)

Superman took fishing line (you can use very thin string as well) and tied several pieces back and forth across 4 boards in the garage. Then, he laid the pieces of trim on top of those and sprayed the top and bottom and sides all at the same time. (You’ll want to string your lines high enough that you can get under them to spray them at the same time.)

When he was finished, there was just tiny little spots that needed to be touched up with a small brush, which I did after the shower was put back together. (I just sprayed some of the spray paint into the lid of the can and used a small water color brush to touch up the imperfections) You’ll need to do a few touch ups after you get the shower put back together, so don’t panic if you chip any paint in the process. Once you touch it up, it holds up REALLY well. We’re a month in (and about 50 showers in) and there is no visible wear. :D

When you put the shower back together, you need to make sure that you put silicone caulking under each piece that touches the surface of the shower, whether it is on the floor or wall. Then, use silicone caulk to caulk all of the edges of the trim around the entire shower.

Like I said, it’s intense. But, totally worth it! :D

And, you can enjoy your very own before and after pictures!!