1810 Bathroom Part 2 - New Tub and Some Drywall

I spent the past few days working on swapping in the new tub and hanging some of the drywall. I owe a big thank you to Lon and Elise, and Laura and Lex for all of the help with the bigger stuff. I'm also very thankful that Denise next door has been very understanding about the noise, I hope it hasn't been too bad.

Here are some pictures of the progress.

I took the sawzall to the old tub and pulled it out in a few pieces.



Above you can see the tub is out and the outer wall has new insulation. The old tub leaked so the insulation behind it was pretty nasty and needed to be replaced.



There was a floor joist directly below where the drain would normally go so I had to get creative with some PVC fittings and bend the drain along the contour of the tub so it would fit.

The shared wall of the duplex had a layer of insulation board behind the old drywall. I decided to just use two layers of drywall. Here Lex is helping hang the sheet that goes behind the tub and shower.

Once everything was ready I called Lon to come over and help set the tub. After a few test runs to make sure everything would fit we mixed up 60lbs of morter and piled it onto the subfloor where the tub would go. We then pressed the tub into the mortar so that the floor of the tub is basically supported by cement.

Here you can see some more creative PVC work to connect the drain. You can also see how bad the ceiling was from all the past leaks.



Since we had to remove the old shower valve to get the tub in place I soldered a shutoff valve on the cold line so we could fill the tub with water (458lbs worth) to press it down into the mortar bed.



The next day I put in the new shower valve. It took two attempts because I didn't tighten the cold inlet tight enough...I hate threaded fittings, especially when they are behind a wall.



With the new shower valve in place I could finally install the shower surround. Before I screwed everything in place I took it for a test run and then pulled the right panel back off to double check for leaks on the shower valve, everything looked good so I put it back together and screwed it in.



Tuesday it was finally nice outside so I decided it was a good day to cut a hole in the roof.



Here is the vent that should have been installed about 29 years ago. This along with the new fan will eliminate all the moisture problems I had in the old bathroom.



I then switched gears and started hanging the drywall around the top of the shower. I decided to use furring strips behind the drywall so that I could go right over the nailing flange of the tub/shower. This will save all the effort of having to fill that gap with mud later on...and all the worrying about whether or not its going to crack in a few years.



Here is a close up showing the drywall over the nailing flange. When I tape and mud all I will have to do is fill the small gap and then after the walls are painted I'll run a bead of silicone along the joint to keep any moisture out of the wall.