I am looking at renovating my bathroom, and I would like to replace my old bathtub with a deeper one. My house was built in the 70's and the tub has gyprock walls on 3 sides.I am relatively inexperienced diy'er.I have looked around and bathtubs are relatively inexpensive,but paying a contractor to install one seems to be very expensive.Can anyone explain the inns and outs of replaceing a bathtub. Thanks
Step #1: Make sure you can maneuver a new one INTO the house/bath.
Replacing a bathtub is major bitch. You need to remove the tiles and sheet rock around it. Sometimes you need to remove studs/walls, toilet, vanity and door just to get it out. I'm doing one now where I need to stand the tub up to get it out. Lucky its steel and not cast iron.
You can break up a cast iron tub and take it out in pieces.
Just tried this last month. After about the third whack with my 20lb sledge my wife started hollering that the cans were falling off the shelves in th epantry downstairs. I looked at the tub & saw that I had just cracked the porcelain coating, but the iron was intact.
I grabbed my reciprocating saw-- and a blade appropriately called 'The Torch' - and 3 blades and 20 minutes later, with no further damage to the house, I had 2 150lb pieces instead of 1 300 pounder.
[Warning to OP-- That was 5 weeks ago and the start of what I saw as a $700 2 weekend job. [We were *just* going to replace the tub & put in a surround] I'm pleased with my work, but it is not quite done, and I just went over $2000. We have all new fixtures, walls, ceiling and floor covering-- and I even canned the crap hollowcore door that was on the bathroom. I paint the new door this weekend and I'll be done.]Jim
I replaced a 30 year old bath tub with a jaccuzzi, and this was my first time doing it. It was a major undertaking, but not an impossible task.
You have to take down the walls surrounding the tub, and expose the studs. If it is a cast iron tub, break it up with a sledge hammer. If it is fiberglass, you may be able to saw it off in pieces. It is not worth trying to maneuver the old tub out in one peice. Save that energy for moving the new tub in.
With the old tub out of the way, this is the time to do any plumbing repairs.
Maneuvering the new tub will be a big pain. But I was able to move it without anyones help. A fiberglass tub will be much easier to maneuver. Since the tub is rectangular, and the space it goes into is also rectangular and is a tight fit, you have to do some math to figure out which is the best angle to come in at. I ended up having to remove some more drywall so that I could slide parts of the bathtub between the studs to create more maneuvering space. It was tough, but I got it in somehow. Once the tub is in, everything is smooth sailing. Replace the walls with some green boards, and cover it with some brand new acrylic surrounds, and you will have a brand new bathroom.
I had the same difficulty, but the trick with the sledge is to get the first crack in the cast iron. Once a crack appears, then the whole thing starts to crumble pretty quickly. I was not convinced at first that something that solid, and hard to cause the first crack, would break up that easily.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.