Our house has but one full bath, and before last weekend, it looked like the above picture. (Note that the faucet and the hot/cold water knobs have been removed for maximum groatiness.) The above picture aside, we actually keep a pretty clean shower; we routinely clean it with bleach so there is very little mold or mildew and the tile behind the peeling white paint is actually structurally sound. For this reason, we had no existential motivation to completely gut the tub, but we obviously didn't like showering around peeling paint and 70's-era pink tile. So we settled on the "in-between option" of a tub surround.
I'd heard about the idea of a tub surround from a friend of mine, but was immediately concerned by many poor reviews for existing units on Home Depot's website. (For those who do not know, a tub surround is a three- or five-piece fiberglass apparatus that can be adhered permanently to either tile or drywall to simulate the look of brand-new tile. The cheapest ones are under $100, really fancy-shmancy fake granite ones can approach $500.) Then, I realized that the people who post reviews on HomeDepot.com almost always breathe through their mouths, so I decided to bypass that particular bowel of the Internet and check some other DIY-focused websites.
There I found that installing a tub surround was not a bad idea, but could be deceptively difficult (often because the walls surrounding tubs are not perfectly square and require some creative fitting of the tub surround pieces). Our case would be somewhat easier because the tiles behind the surround were structurally sound (meaning we didn't have to ply off the tiles and build up the drywall underneath to match the surrounding tiles) and because our walls were plumb. But it was also more difficult in a sense, because we have a window in our shower - Giggity! - which would require some intricate cutting to get the fiberglass pieces to fit.
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With me on this project was a family friend who had done this before, and was more handy than I. We began at noon with a trip to Home Depot to pick out the tub surround. April and I selected a middle of the road option - the ASB Distinction, at $227 - and also purchased three tubes of Loc-Tite tub surround adhesive and two tubes of bath/shower caulk. (The grand total after taxes was about $270.)
The reviews of the ASB Distinction, while often mouth-breathing in nature, imply that the fiberglass material is rather flimsy (this was true in our case; the top of the right corner cracked and had to be caulked into place at the end of the job). Installing each of the three pieces was easy. Measuring their fit, on the other hand, was not. The main issue was the window in our shower; it had a ledge that jutted out 1/4" on the left-hand side, but not at all on the right-hand side of the window. This led to an asymmetry in our measurements, compounded by the fact that the - bear with me, imagine you're facing the shower while you read this - left-hand side of the window almost (but not quite) matched the right end of the "left-hand side" piece of the surround (which was intended to cover the left, back corner of the shower). This meant we had no margin for error and had to use a utility knife to shave razor-thin bits of the "left-hand side" piece of the surround, so it fit just right into where the window ledge and molding began.
Also challenging, from my novice perspective, were the holes for the faucet and hot and cold water dials. Here, there was some margin for error, because each hole would be more than covered by the fixture itself, once it was re-installed. However, if you severely misalign the holes on a horizontal axis (like I almost did, forgetting here to measure twice), caulking would not fix the mistake and you would be out some money.
With the help of a utility knife, 2" and 1 1/2" circular drill bits, and a Dremel, we were able to measure and cut the three pieces in about two hours of painstaking labor (mostly checking and double-checking our numbers). Then we applied one entire tube of Loc-Tile tub surround adhesive to each piece and installed the pieces, slamming each piece with our bare hands and then bracing each piece against a wall (which you'll see in the picture just below this paragraph). We also taped the surround to the wall in sections, just to help the pieces stay up while the adhesive bonded to the tile, and before we were able to caulk.
Before we began to caulk, we wanted to re-install the fixtures, and this is where we hit our biggest snag. The hot and cold water dials reattached easily enough, but for some reason the original faucet would not screw back into the plastic nub you see in the very top picture. We tried everything - left-twisting, right-twisting, light touch and brute force - and brute force ended up snapping the plastic nub in half. Using a wrench, we were able to gently remove the rest of the plastic nub from the underlying 5/8" copper pipe. I was now off to Home Depot, muttering and cursing under my breath, for a replacement bath faucet.
I found a replacement bath faucet in brushed nickel (which doesn't perfectly match the other fixtures, but was close enough) for $25 - which was fortunate, because I easily could have spent $100 or more on a brand new shower head and bath faucet combination set. While I was out shopping, our family friend was able to handle most of the caulking (the seam you see on the right hand side of the back wall in the above picture was the trickiest junction, requiring multiple applications of caulk to provide a seamless look).
Upon my return, we were able to (presumably) adapt the 5/8" copper pipe in the wall to the 1/2" plastic nub included with the replacement faucet. We tested it by running the faucet for 30 seconds (big mistake), thought everything was fine, and cleaned up for the day at about 4:30 pm (the faucet added about half an hour to the project). The picture of the finished product is below, with an (EPIC FAIL AHEAD) appendix to follow.
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On Monday morning, while my wife was about five minutes into what should have been an enjoyable first shower in prettier surroundings (although I'm certain she missed the hot pink disco tile), I was downstairs in the kitchen filling my travel mug and about to leave for work when I thought to myself, I'm going to check in the basement one more time, just to make sure there isn't a slow leak with that faucet. I feel like I have a sixth sense for smelling disasters - I always trust my inner paranoid psychopath. This time, He was correct, because on the way downstairs, I heard a rapid drip coming from our downstairs half bath (right below the main bath) and thought to myself: Shit. This can't be good.
I must have caught the leak fairly early, because the ceiling was only leaking in one place in the middle, and the paint was only distended in a 3" x 3" circle (I grabbed the utility knife and cut the distended paint so that the water would leave the ceiling ASAP). The ceiling itself didn't distend, which was also good news. Our basement is unfinished and when I ran down there next, I also found water leaking to the floor of the wall facing both bathrooms. So water must have dripped down from behind the shower wall, through the wall insulation to both the basement and the bathroom ceiling. I ran upstairs - thankfully my wife left the bathroom door unlocked - and screamed something like "Babe. You're going to have to turn off the shower. Major leak downstairs."
She complied, finishing her shower across town at her parents' house and later that day filing for divorce. (Only two-thirds of the above statement is true.)
At this point I knew the problem was outside my realm of understanding, and it was also 8:15 on a Monday morning and I needed to get to work. So I called the neighborhood plumber - who is generally great and also fair with his prices, if not cheap - who called me right back and was over the house within an hour. It look him about 30 minutes to determine the issue was two-fold.
First, the copper 5/8" pipe that I mentioned before had been loosened from the main pipe from the basement to the bathroom. With significant water pressure over 1.5 showers, it eventually started to leak. Also, the plastic 5/8" to 1/2" adapter that came with the $25 replacement bath fixture was - as you might imagine - of poor quality. He replaced it with a brass fixture. We then proceeded to run both the bath faucet and the shower for ten minutes apiece and determined there was no further leakage. The plumber charged $135, mostly for his time, an understandable sum that left a bad taste in my mouth only because it was such an oversight in the first place.
Assuming the downstairs bathroom ceiling does not need to be partially replaced, and assuming the walls can survive this one-time water intrusion, the entire tub surround project cost about $450 (counting gas money and beer for our family friend). I'm hopeful there will be no lingering after effects, because the ceiling seems to have dried without any problems that are visible to the eye, and also because I placed the dehumidifier on max-dry setting right up to the insulation once I discovered the leak. The $450 figure is not bad in my opinion, especially compared to a bathroom renovation, but still higher than it should have been due to user error and my inexperience. Next time I'll definitely remember to double-check each and every fitting - and also remember to use Teflon tape to ensure that each fitting is properly protected against pressure leaks.
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