Bathroom Day 2: Tales of a Frustrated Plumber

Day 2 started under pressure. We new the plumber was arriving at 1 pm to install the new fixtures and pipes in the tub area. So before he arrived we had to get the new bathtub in place. First we installed vapor barrier, something that was lacking on the exterior walls. Then we moved the tub into the room which required taking off the door stop.

Once it was sitting in place the hard part began. The instructions look easy enough; level it then install 1x3 boards around the perimeter to rest the edge on. Leveling went okay, some plywood shims and we were done. But getting that 1x3 in the right spot then securing it in place was harder than it looked. We had our new tool: the framing nailer. Man is than a scary thing. It sparked and the nails are huge. On the first try the thing was no longer level by the time the nails were in. So in came the pry bar and the husband went off to Depot to get some more lumber. On the second try it went in and we started contemplating how far we could proceed until the plumber arrived; would he need to move the tub? Access the entire wall?

Luckily getting this far had taken all morning and so at this point the plumber arrived. He proceeded to work for 3 hours on various aspects of our plumbing. He replaced the pipes, the drain and the pipe for venting, all the while having trouble with the small spaces and placement of floor joists. At the end of the day he was still not done and planned to return the next day.

During the plumber work he had moved the tub to get at the drain, so after he left we put the tub back in place and leveled it again. I then started attempting to build a shelf into the remaining 14 inches of dead space at the end of the tub. This should have been an easy task, involving making a box using 2x3s and leveling it in place, but it was just not working the way I wanted it to. Tiered and frustrated I finally abandoned this at 6:30 and we called it a day

And now we know: plumber work takes longer than expected. Illustrated diagrams with only 4 steps make tasks look easier than they are.