New Shower Adventures

As I mentioned in my last 2 posts, this past weekend we got a new shower. It was a lot of work (mostly for the Bup) & a lot of mess.

He started tearing out the old shower walls on Friday night. That went a little too smoothly, so of course, when he went to the basement to turn off the water valves & the cold water valve broke off in his hand. Oops...   We headed up to his parents' to borrow their truck & went to Lowe's to pick up the new tub & walls, plus a new valve.

On Saturday morning, my dad came over & they worked on getting out the old cast iron tub. It was a beast! They had to use the car jack to get it up on its side.

When they turned the tub on it's side, we heard a waterfall. All of the water that had been between the bathfitter & the old tub went pouring over the side & down into the basement. There's a drain on the basement floor almost directly below this bathroom, but that didn't help my clean laundry that I had drying on the line. I didn't even think to take it down. Oops.

Once it was up, they used boards to leverage it, & furniture sliders to get it out of the house.

The only time I'll see a tub in my kitchen (I hope!).

I guess having a tub in the yard makes us super cool, right? Mom suggested using it as a flower planter. Hah! We called up a guy in town who came & took it off in his truck. Whew.

Once the tub was out, wall demolition began. The new shower walls had to be mounted to the studs, so all of the plaster had to come out. This went relatively quickly. It was the cleanup from it that took forever!

We filled about a dozen buckets with the plaster chunks, plus most of the shop-van bin.

One of the pieces of plaster fell & hit the plumbing, spraying water everywhere. I heard the Bup shout & went in to see him covered in water! It hit the ceiling & was dripping all over.

All clean!

Trash. Lots & lots of trash.

Here are some of the buckets. Anyone need some plaster chunks?

My father-in-law came over to help put in the new tub. They had to make another run to Lowe's to get more plumbing parts & a shower door. Getting the tub in was a feat in itself. It's slightly deeper than the old tub, so they really had to wedge it in there.

Once the tub was in, another problem came up. Even though he was reading the instructions (!!!) & they said to measure 74" up the wall, the shower walls came up 77", so more plaster had to come down. More plaster demo = more mess.

On to the plumbing work.

I helped lift in the back shower wall, & then he got the other walls in. There were some issues with making everything level, but with a few shims it worked out. We had another short delay when he turned on the water & nothing happened, but he fixed that quickly.

Here's where we are now. The plaster above the walls still needs to be finished & the framing isn't complete, but we can take showers! He almost had the door installed, except it was too tall for the shower walls. When he cut the sides to fit, he realized that the glass doors wouldn't fit then. So...we're at a stand still until the new sides come in.

I love the new shower. The shower head is higher than the old one, so it's more like being under a waterfall. The rest of the project will be more spread out. This was a lot for one weekend!