Sunday, July 06, 2014

The Elephant in the (Bath)Room

The floor around our one and only bathtub at the 1952 House creaks and groans during dry winter months. As moaned about previously, I would love a new bathtub due to the peeling glaze I applied seven years ago in an attempt to prolong the life of the now-62-year-old tub. The new bathtub need not be fancy. In fact, I have an affordable, not fancy, replacement picked out from Home Depot. 





The problem lies underneath the bathtub in the form of rotted subfloor. I hosted a foundation expert last week who poked around under the piers and beams for an estimate to repair the one beam that I thought was causing the creaky bathroom floor. The one beam turned out to be one beam sitting off kilter, one pier sitting off kilter and a rotten subfloor under the bathtub area. Yikes. How did our home inspector miss all that?

To install a new bathtub, we have to be ready for several contingencies: repair the one beam and one pier; rip out the old bathtub and some surrounding tiles to see how far the rotten subfloor extends; possibly remove the one and only toilet and all surrounding tile if the rotten subfloor extends to that area; possibly rip out the bathroom sink and all surrounding tile if the rotten subfloor extends to that area. Then put it all back together with the new subfloor and new tub.  

Chad and I were prepared to shower at the gym for a few days to accommodate the new tub installation. However, with this new information, we are not prepared to open the floor of the one and only bathroom at the 1952 House for goodness knows how long. We are not prepared to trek to our respective gyms every time we need to use the toilet. I also refuse to put a port-o-potty in the yard. REFUSE.

That know-it-all, Hindsight, keeps nagging me that we should have replaced the bathtub when we first bought the 1952 House and redid the bathroom. Live and learn. Our next house will have more than one toilet, and will feature a bathtub made and installed in the twenty-first century.

For the time being, I'm going to learn to love showers, ignore the peeling glaze on the tub, ignore the creaky bathroom floor, and do my very best to ignore the elephant in our one and only bathroom.