Bad Links?
Other glitches?
Notify Webmaster

Showering with the sharks

By MICHAEL BOYLAN
mboylan@thecitizennews.com

It is said that every artist hears a voice, inspiring the act of creation.

The voice that Fayetteville resident John Parker heard may have whispered something like, “If you build it, they will shower. And laugh.”

Parker is the creator of what may be the very first “Shark Shower,” a shower built inside of a faux shark made of metal, foam, Plexiglas and spray-on bed liner that will hang upside-down outside of his lake house on Lake Sinclair.

He got the idea for the shower when thinking of solutions to large numbers of guests at the lake house waiting to get their turn in the house’s one shower after a day at the lake.

Parker, who has created a number of maritime-themed pieces for the house out of exotic woods, including a full-size mermaid, was inspired to create the Shark Shower by his niece, Karen Scarbrough, a fan of sharks. He has even named the shark K-Bite as a sort of tribute to her.

Parker began the process by drawing a picture of the shark on a transparency and then projecting it on a wall to get the dimensions correct. To be 36 inches across so that people could fit inside the shark comfortably to take a shower, the shark would have to be close to 15 feet tall. The design was then drawn on Masonite and then began what Parker considered to be the toughest part of the process, welding.

It was the most difficult aspect for Parker because he had never welded before and had to teach himself to weld.

“I went through a lot of grinding wheels and a lot of metal in the process,” he said.

After the frame was established, Parker covered it in over 400 square feet of fiberglass cloth. The construction also called for an estimated 17 gallons of resin and eight gallons of speed-liner, which is typically used for bed-liners for pick-up trucks.

Parker did most of the work on K-Bite on the weekends and figures he put in close to 200 hours of work on the project. He got some help from his wife, Julie, and his sons Michael and Joe.

“There were times when I thought the project was too big to do and I wasn’t pleased with how it looked initially,” said Parker as he recounted the early struggles with his creation. “Once we got the frame and the screen up though, it really took shape and started to look good. When we put the teeth in, it started to look really good.”

Parker also gives a lot of praise to the staff at Brian’s Paint and Body Shop on Ga. Highway 54, who understood his vision for K-Bite and did what Parker considers a “terrific job” with the painting of K-Bite.

The eyes on the shark came from Duke’s Taxidermy and were custom-made.

Though the completion of the project is its own reward, Parker also took pleasure in some of the looks he got as he was transporting K-Bite on a trailer from Brian’s Paint and Body Shop back to his house.

There will be even more of those looks as the next stop for K-Bite is the lake house, where Parker is constructing the deck to hold the shark upside down, as if it were a trophy from the greatest fisherman alive.

When it is fully operational, people will open the door located in K-Bite’s ribs and step inside the shark to take a shower. Both a red light and white flood light will come on and the theme from the film “Jaws” will play for a few minutes, before switching over to the more mellow sounds of Bob Marley.

People will be hearing a lot more about the Shark Shower as both Parker and his creation will be featured in a national brochure from Speedliner.

Parker hasn’t decided on what his next project will be, though he admits he does have some pretty big ideas. It is enough for now though to stare across the yard at the giant shark on the trailer and reflect on the accomplishment of building something of that magnitude.