My Deferred Maintenance Timebomb Revisited

A couple weeks ago I shared with you Playing Hot Potoato: My Deferred Maintenance Timebomb. Well here is the second half of the story.

Shortly after demolishing the basement bathroom wall, I went upstairs to see what was happening to cause this mess. Here is a photo of the tub upstairs.

It looks nice right?  A clawfoot tub surrounded in tile.  Well, a closer inspection reveals that grout is missing in the seams and the tiles slope away from the tub.  To fix that, someone before had put silicone on all the grout lines and in the cracks.  I guess it worked for a couple years but now the band-aid has failed.  This was the source of all the problems.  I notified my tenants that I needed to remove the surround.  It wasn't an exciting sounding proposition for them but they agreed to let me do it to prevent further damage downstairs.  It took a full day and a morning but I was able to remove the surround, replace the faucet, and install a true clawfoot show kit.  Here is the tub now:

  
Even though the flooring under the tub is 60 years old (which will be corrected in the near future) I think the freestanding tub looks much better than the surround.  It certainly works much better.  The water stays inside the tub where it belongs.  .

Replacing the plumbing was a chore.  My 320-pound friend showed up to help and he put all his weight and muscle into turning the nuts to remove the faucet.  The corrosion was so bad that instead of releasing, the nuts just ripped in half.  So, when reworking your clawfoot tubs, make sure you have a strong man or a plumber on hand to get the hard work done for you.