With the demo and vent all done, it’s time to crest the hill and start putting the room back together. First up in that plan is to install the tub. We purchased an American Standard Americast Princeton tub it’s fairly standard at 30″ wide and 60″ long. After finding a Lowes that had the correct left hand drain, we headed over to pick it up. Luckily they had multiple tubs since the one on the floor was taken in the time it took us to find a cart. There were multiple ones up on the rack but just took some extra time for someone to get it for us.
The tub is fairly light which made it no problem for me to trick my parents to help carry it up the stairs when they brought dinner. With it upstairs w could do our first fit check and it slid in like a glove.
Now it was time to finalize the walls all around the tub first by adding insulation onto the two exterior walls and then button up the plumbing that wouldn’t be accessible after the tub was installed.
The tub plumbing seems simple but since so many things are locked together it needed to be a perfect fit. I did a lot of fit checking of the overflow tube and the p-trap and finally decided it was close enough for the final install. I also fixed the copper plumbing and added a mixing valve-> Which came back to get me later….
This was also the time where I accidently knocked over the PVC primer and it spilled all over my shoe turning my sock purple. It also stained the plywood which is evident in the picture below. Always something fun…
Now that everything was ready I was ready for the mad rush to get the tub permanently mounted. I added a ledger for the far edge of the tub to rest on and mixed up thinset mortar for the tub to rest in. I should have made the mortar a bit more runny to help pour it out but after taking it upstairs there was no turning back. I slid the tub in and then realized I forgot to put silicone on the ledger so with a few sprints up and down the stairs we go the tub situated and all the drain components mounted. This was such a great feeling to start putting things back together.
