Just got back from a nice weekend in Mosier, Oregon, helping my friend Paul install his Tadelakt shower. Mosier is a tiny little town next to Hood River along the beautiful Columbia Gorge region. So I worked Friday and Saturday and got a day off Sunday to do a little hiking.
Here’s me and the shower, no good pictures yet but Paul will send me some after he gets the bathroom cleaned up and I’ll post them.
Paul is also going to finish off the floor in the bathroom and the countertops, so it will be one of those nice seamless Tadelakt bathrooms.
For substrate we used a new product I have become very interested in. It’s called Rubberize It and it’s a Zero VOC paint on rubber coating that seems to waterproof any surface it coats. On their website they do a demonstration on the inside of a cardboard box which they completely waterproof with the rubberizer and then fill with water. Pretty impressive. Here’s a link to their website. What surprised me when I ran some tests in the studio a couple of months ago was how well all of our material bonded to it. I applied the Tadelakt directly over the coats of Rubberize It and our material bonds very strongly to it. So theoretically, in a shower one could build the substrate out of almost anything (for example, plywood) and coat with Rubberize It and end up with a waterproof surface the Tadelakt will bond great to. Seems like it should work. Paul is one of the principals in the company so he gets to be guinea pig for a few months and then I am going to use it in my house for a Tadelakt shower as well. I’ll keep you posted.
You can also use the material on exteriors, which is very interesting, and they seem to be doing a brisk business selling the coating for roofs, as well as koi ponds and other water garden features.
The Columbia gorge is such a beautiful area, go there if you can. Here’s a couple of shots I took during our hike:
Nice, right? We have a couple of spots left in our certification class next week, and there is also room in the one-day Tadelakt class. I’ll be using my new find Rubberize It to prep all the Tadelakt boards. I’ll post photos of that finished bathroom as soon as I get some.
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