It’s been quite a while since I did any renovation work on the house, but today I made up for my past lack of ambition. The corner whirlpool tub and the toilet in the ensuite bathroom have been removed. As much as I would have liked to have salvaged the tub (similar models sell for more than a thousand dollars), I ended up instead firing up the reciprocating saw. It would have been impossible to get the tub out of the bathroom without tearing a wall down first. And once again, as I undid some of the work of the previous owner (or the people he hired to renovate the bathroom), poor planning and poor workmanship became glaringly obvious.
No Takers
I had put the word out among my co-workers that I had a corner whirlpool tub that I wanted to get rid of. The price: free. Just come and get it. Nobody wanted it for the same reason we didn’t want it: it was simply too big. No one seemed to have the five foot square area that the tub required. Plus it used too much water and took too long to fill up. I had considered donating it to the Habitat ReStore, but, as it turned out, removing without damaging it would have been extremely difficult. Besides, it would have been impossible to get the tub out of the bathroom anyway. I guess it’s a good thing nobody wanted it after all.
Nothing that a reciprocating saw can’t handle
Okay…I admit it. It was rather fun hacking up the tub into more manageable chunks to get it out the door. Fun but messy. I was almost tempted to pay tribute to Red Green and duct tape it back together….
Workmanship? What workmanship?
No surprise, given everything else wrong with the house, but the installation of the tub was less than perfect. I was already aware of some of the problems.
Issues I knew about:
- The tub was sunken. The floor joists had been cut and the floor lowered. The tub was a tripping hazard, and the supporting structure in the basement was not very good. Plumbing in the basement had to be re-configured around the lowered section, and it was just plain ugly.
New Surprises:
- The skirting around the tub only served as a base for the tile trim. It did not support the tub. Small 2×4 studs provided the frame for 1/4 inch plywood. The plywood butted up against the edge of the tub. The 2×4′s provided a little support, but this structure could have been a lot better.
- The pump motor was completely inaccessible. It would have likely been impossible to replace should it have failed at some point down the road, if we had kept the tub.
- The floor tiles were installed directly over top of a hardwood floor. A new underlayment should have been installed first. In the future I will be installing new floor joists, to bring the floor back up level. The hardwood floor and the tile will be completely removed, and cement board will be used for the tile base when we re-do the bathroom. At least with the funky structure removed from the basement, the plumbing can be cleaned up. This is a priority since we will be having new plumbing for the hydronic heat installed within the next couple of months.
Hole in the floor
**Update on the dryer** Our dryer was fixed 18 days after it originally broke down, sixteen days after the repair technician first looked at it. The repair, which involved some serious disassembly, took about one hour. The dryer has been working fine since. One should not have to wait two weeks for a part on backorder when the appliance is only a few months old….