Failed shower pan Cincinnati, OH

The bathroom on the upper floor of this Auten Avenue home had been beautifully renovated — marble subway tile, basket-weave floors, a freestanding clawfoot tub, glass enclosure. But the shower pan was failing silently: water had been infiltrating through a compromised floor seal, saturating the wood lath and joist assembly between floors, and working its way down into the living room ceiling below. By the time the damage was visible from beneath, the framing inside was already heavily stained and showing signs of long-term moisture intrusion.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

The shower in the upstairs bathroom — finished with marble subway tile and a glass panel enclosure — had developed a failure at the floor-level seal between the glass panel base and the shower pan curb. Water escaping through this joint infiltrated the tile substrate and worked through the floor assembly below, saturating the old-growth wood lath subfloor and the joist faces between the two levels. The evidence inside the ceiling cavity told the full story: dark staining across multiple lath boards, moisture-blackened framing members, and a visible leak path traced to the shower pan area directly above. In the living room below, the plaster ceiling had been opened to reveal the extent of the damage — a large rectangular cutout exposing the lath construction and the compromised framing. Containment sheeting was erected floor-to-ceiling to protect the living room contents and hardwood floors during the mitigation process, and an air mover was deployed to begin drying the cavity.

A key finding on this job: the bathroom had been recently and beautifully renovated — but the shower pan waterproofing had failed at the glass panel base, creating a chronic slow leak that caused far more structural damage than an acute burst would have. The framing staining pattern inside the ceiling cavity indicated the intrusion had been ongoing well before any surface sign appeared in the living room below.