My bathtub faucet has been leaking on and off for a while now. But recently, it has gotten so bad that it’s literally wasting buckets and buckets of water every single day! It had almost become a trickle instead of a drip. Hubby couldn’t fix it, because I have a cultured marble bathtub, and whoever installed in left no access whatsoever to the plumbing in the tub. Now we began by filing a claim for the leaky faucet with Choice Home Warranty, but that was a waste of the $45 service fee, because all their contractors do is look for ways to say it’s excluded for one made up reason or another. In this case, a plumber came in, sat on the side of the tub, and without even taking a tool from his belt, he said it needed a new faucet AND a new tub AND a mold remediator to come in and remove the inevitable mold underneath the tub. Now this was because the cultured marble tub had a crack in it between the overflow and the drain. We had already paid a marble company to come out and repair it when we first moved in, but after only a few months, it re-cracked in the same place. So when I got a denial from the home warranty company, I found out that the plumber told them the faucet was rusted out and needed replacement, and rust is an exclusion in the policy. I was so ticked! I filed a grievance but never connected with the claims manager, and they didn’t respond to my email. I hate them. And we had *just* renewed for another 3 1/2 years…more wasted money.
So my husband said “screw them,” and he cut a hole for an access panel in the wall of my adjacent closet and got to work. He discovered that in fact, the tub crack did go all the way through and was leaking, but only into the dirt hole around the drain, so no mold or anything at all…no additional damage to anything. But this access he made also allowed him to get to the faucet plumbing. So he said “forget about the plumber…we can do this ourselves!” So we budgeted the $2,400 we got from the latest stimulus check, made a plan, and got to work. We bought an almost $400 faucet, and we ordered a deep soaking tub from Amazon for about $850.
Our tub had a tile step going up to it, so the tile had to be removed but saved to go on the floor in place of the step, and the step had to be removed.
He also had to demolish the cultured marble tub while saving the wall splashes and the marble tub skirt to be reused. He got all that done and proceeded to tackle the plumbing issues.
He made a lot of trips to Home Depot for plumbing parts. We discovered they had put a joint in the tub drain to relocate it, and that had to be removed so it would be in its original location to line up with the new tub, which was much larger than the tiny shallow tub we had before.
When the faucet came, he had to solder some parts together in that kit, too, so he did that in the garage and then brought it inside. Once he’d resolved the drain issues, he brought the new tub in and set it in place, dry-fitted everything, and then pulled the tub back out to add insulation. This tub is against an outside wall next to the pool, and my bath gets cold really fast. So he got a ton of cans of foam insulation and insulated the outside of the tub and left it to dry.
Then he set it back in place, leveled it, and then set it in a little concrete for stability. Then he installed the new faucet, the overflow, and hooked up the drain. Although everything was still exposed, I was able to take a nice bath this evening in my new tub…yay! Then I discovered that we only have a 50 gallon hot water tank on this side of the house, but my new tub holds 67 gallons! I ran out of hot water before I could fill it all the way up. Darn! That’ll have to be another project for the future. We may switch to a tankless hot water heater, because my daughter’s tub is also big, and we often run out of hot water…two people can’t bathe or shower around the same time. But for now, he’s just going to raise up the temperature of the tank and see if we can get by with just that for now.
So now, he has to do all the finishing steps…putting the backsplashes back up, caulking around the tub, putting the tiles back down on the floor, etc. That leaves an open side to the tub still…so we are trying to figure out how we want to enclose that. We could just do a tub skirt, but we were thinking that since I no longer have a tub surround to set my shampoo and soap on, it would be nice to build in some custom cabinets on the front side of the tub, which also gives me a place to sit while I reach the faucets. Because the faucet had to be installed on the side of this tub, I wanted it on the far side so it wouldn’t block the entry to the tub. So now we just have to figure out how to finish that exposed side of the tub. If we build in a nice cabinet with a top on it, it will give me a place to conceal my shampoo, condition, soap, razor, etc., which would be ideal. I like a clean tub area without a bunch of stuff sitting out, so that would be my goal. But we don’t have woodworking tools, so that limits our options. Hubby thinks he can adapt some over-the-fridge cabinets to work there and just change out the doors, so we’ll have to see how that works out.
In any case, there’s no more leaking tub and no more leaking faucet, so the immediate concerns are all resolved. Now we just have to make it look nice! And in terms of finishing touches, we also planned to make an inset shelf in the wall above the tub and install a 24” smart tv inside. Woo-hoo! We budgeted about $100 for a Roku tv, and I found one at Walmart. It’s here and waiting for installation. Now hubby has to make the box in the wall and add trim, run power there, install the tv with its mount, and I’ll be ready to soak and watch tv! Also, he has to put trim around the access he made in my closet and finish that off.
I’m not entirely confident we are capable of finishing off the front side of the tub the way we envision, so we may have to call in a custom cabinet company or something like that to finish off the job, but at least the problems have been addressed. And just for the record, I want to reiterate that there was no mold, and the original faucet had NO RUST, either! It just needed a gasket. But whatever. I despise Choice Home Warranty company.
So wish us luck on the finishing touches of this project! And good job, honey! Problems resolved.
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