When thinking about an intro for this post, nothing came to mind. So you’re going to write about our bathtub, and how it got in place? Great. How do you get people excited to read about that? Maybe I can tell about how we chose our tub? How I had to go lying into it, right in the showroom, because Chrisje had sprained her ankle a week before? I had no clue how to start it, so I told Chrisje. And then she reached out to me and held her fingers against my head for a little, in an attempt to give me some inspiration. “Did it help?” Yes, I’m just going to skip the intro and dive straight in.
First we brought the tub inside the bathroom because, well, you’ve got to start somewhere and with something, right?
That’s definitely going to fit in there! So now that we know where the tub is going and double-checked that it’s a fit, it’s time to start setting it up. First we installed the legs onto the tub, making sure the screws are screwed in slightly angled (so not to pierce through the tub bottom):
Now turn the bath back upside up, and it’s time to level things up:
Once that was done and secured, time for a little trickery: insulating the tub to preserve warmth a while longer:
It’s an itchy process, and it’s a hell to get it to stick on the tub. In the end I had tape everywhere, and put some cord around it as well, to get it to stay in place.
Once that’s done it’s time to start on the suspension for the tub’s edges. You have some options here, like bricks, wooden frame, fancy stuff like Kerdi board, and so on. We opted for the wooden frame for a number of reasons: I didn’t want the extra weight of bricks, wood is quite flexible and less costly than the fancy stuff. I started with putting small beams on the walls, at the height the tub was. Then a leg on the free standing corner and connecting it all with beams and we’re nearly set. As the acrylic isn’t flat where it isn’t visible, the beams needed some shaving.
Then the tub goes in the frame yet another time, for good this time. Add some more supporting beams to create a rigid frame, and you’re nearly ready (haven’t we heard that before?). I also added a hole (or at least what’s going to be a hole) to provide some kind of hatch, so that on a later time, when I need it, I’m able to access the siphon.
With the frame completely done, it’s time to screw on the drywall that’s going to hold the tiles later on. This also means that we took that into account when determining where the frame had to come: the tub’s edge minus the thickness of the drywall plus the thickness of the tile and glue.
Not all the screws weren’t in place yet, but you get the idea. The hatch didn’t receive any drywall: I bought some magnets from Schlüter to screw in place in the wood, and glue metal on the back of a tile, and close the hatch like that (but more on that later).
With the bath tub tackled, time to move on to the next part in the bath room. Have you done any tub installing lately? What type of tub did you pick, and how did you install it? Or did you have it installed? Tell us in the comments