Instead of What’s Blooming, I’m posting a reno project! One of the more difficult parts of the bathroom remodel was replacing the bathtub and surround.

The old surround was fiberglass and the tub was obviously part of the whole kit. The tub stopper was broken and the surface of the tub had a bubble and crack in it, which at some point would probably cause leaking. Anyway, time to go. We removed the bits of drywall that were covering the lip of the surround and we were surprised (or maybe not really) to see a complete hole to the roof.

You can also see where the tile was attached to the back wall from the original bathroom. Turns out that tile was peach colored, since we found some bits of it behind everything.

The surround came out easier than expected. The fiberglass broke when we pulled on it, and we could pull it out in several pieces. So, yay on that!

You can just see our original linen closet on the right there. We still have that along with our new one! Anyway, you can see how our house was built. Concrete blocks with plaster over them. The wall where the plumbing is must have been removed to put in this setup.

Next was removal of the tub, which went pretty well. It was a bit tricky maneuvering because there is a radiator right next to the tub. It wasn’t that heavy at least.

Ta-da! All empty.

Since we were replacing a tub with the same dimensions, we didn’t have to move the drainpipes or anything, which was nice. See that radiator there on the left? That plus the windowsill made getting the new tub in a real beeyotch!

The new tub is an enamel coated steel tub. I didn’t want fiberglass because they don’t last as long and you can’t ever refinish them if need be. It took us quite a few tries to maneuver the new tub in having to go *over* both the radiator and window sill. It also involved having to remove more plaster off the wall by the window to squeeze the tub in.

It really took way longer than we thought with having to keep retrying. Not to mention that the tub weighed 70 pounds, so there was much swearing and frustration. We did put a small ding in the tub, too, which I was pretty unhappy about, but it’s on the inside so you can’t see it unless you look in the tub. When we did the floor, we stopped about 6 inches from the tub so that it wouldn’t get damaged when we actually worked on the tub since we finished the other side of the bathroom first – aka phase 1.

Next up was repair, putting up the drywall and getting ready for the shower surround. We had thought a bit about doing tile, but we decided against having to deal with tile maintenance – the floor is enough, thank you. And it would have prolonged the project by quite a few days. We ended up ordering a surround from Lowe’s. It was a 3 piece surround and very heavy. It is some kind of non-fiberglass composite material that is very thick.

Of course, the largest piece created quite a problem getting it up our staircase. We kept trying different ways. The surround wasn’t very “bendy”, which is why it was so difficult, and John suggested cutting off the top 2 rows of “tiles” to get it up the stairs. I was not having that, so we just kept trying and eventually inched it up the stairs with much maneuvering and sweating…

and swearing.

This surround has the look of subway tile.

It had to be trimmed to fit. John did that cutting with a rotary tool and we were both pretty nervous about messing it up because this surround was $800.

The new hardware:

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Then there was a lot of time consuming plaster repair around the surround. I did all of that work and it felt like it took forever. But then I can be a bit of a perfectionist with that stuff, so I kept fiddling a bit more on it.

We will be getting shower doors at some point, but with coronavirus going on and not being a great time to go out browsing for them, we are going to wait and use our current shower curtain.

One more small project to show for the bathroom and then hopefully a full reveal on it!