FAN: Battle of the Roman Tub Faucet

I am cheap when it comes to some things. I will pay a service $30 to mow my lawn every week in the summer, but I usually won't pay for DIY projects around the house. I hear the basic formula for computing labor is 2x the material costs. I am remodeling our master bath and I have the materials at $3,000. I'm not paying somebody $6,000 or even $3,000 to do it for me. So I chunked it up into day jobs and I'll work on it every weekend until it's completed. The big changes are a new slate floor, the super flushing toilet I talked about earlier, a new vanity and top and I'm removing the plexi-glass door to the shower and building a wall 18" further out to make an open shower with no door or curtain. I'm also replacing all the shitty builder grade faucets. What I've learned over time and from Still A Dad is that nothing is too hard to do yourself if you break it down into steps. On the whole it sounds hard and people keep asking me "How do you know how to do that?" Well, in reality, what's the hardest thing I'm doing? I'll answer that. I did it yesterday.

We have a big soaker tub on the opposite side of a half-wall from the toilet. It's boxed in and tiled. The tub spout comes out of the half-wall horizontally with the big single knob controller. We're getting a black granite vanity top and with the slate floor, Mrs. Fan fell in love with the oil rubbed bronze fixtures. Fine. She also fell in love with these faucets that look like old country pumps sometimes called a trough faucet. I didn't think I'd like the water pressure from those for the sinks but I told her we can certainly do it for the tub.

The search went on for a single column single hole version with the controls at the top. No dice in that finish. I did find one or two that were over $500 which is too much to spend on a tub faucet when nobody even uses the tub. What I did find was a 5 hole set that had the pump faucet, 2 controls for water, a diverter and a hand held shower head. Fine. Bought it. A large framed area on the other side of the half-wall would give me access to the area to work on. I'm going to now go into Reader's Digest mode and enumerate my day.

1. The actual hole under the panel is too small to work in so I cut it out to almost the size of the panel. Ha! Prepare to be boarded. I am a DIY machine.

2. Turn off water main. Open all faucets in house. Use the super duper small pipe cutting tool that Still A Dad advised me to buy to cut the hot and cold supplies.

3. Hmmmm. I can't twist the old spout off. I've seen this before. They get funky and stay together. Better yet, maybe it was soldered on. Back to the other side to cut that pipe as well. Ha! Spout off.

4. Knob off. Plate off. Pipe octopus will not fit through gaping 5" circle in the drywall. Back to other side. Two more cuts and its out. From twisting that little tiny sucker around there so many times I realize that I have wussy computer geek hands. I know, shut up.

5. Looking at the gaping holes where the old faucert was I realize I'll need to fix that before I put the new faucet on unless I plan on replacing that entire piece of drywall (ummm, no). Luckily I have a big bucket of spackle and leftover drywall in my workshop from other projects. Draw a circle slightly smaller than hole and cut it out. Make another smaller circle as well. Use thinset to put an old piece of paneling behind the holes, push in my pieces and then spackle them in. Sigh.

6. Polish my cut pipe ends inside and out and flux them up. Push on connectors. Light torch. Catch two different 2x4's on fire, quickly blow them out (the fittings are less than an inch from the vertical studs. This entire project takes place between two studs I'm in an area about 14" wide wood to wood. Solder. Sloppily. If you put the torch down, be careful how close your head gets to it. HA! Tape and screw on stop valves.

7. Turn on pressure to house. Go around closing faucets. Peek in hole. Rats. A dribble. Sigh. Open all faucets. Turn off house main. Unscrew stop valves.

8. Heat joints. Move solder around. Add some more. Screw in stop valves. Close faucets.

9. Turn on water main. Run upstairs again. OMG. What's that? Water spraying? No No No! Oh. Whew. I forgot to close the shower faucet. Hmmm, joints look good.

10. Eat 3 slices of pizza, drink 2 Diet Cokes, call Still A Dad. I think it's 1 pm at this point. I started at 10:15. Not bad. The day is going well. Which can only mean one thing.......

11. Between the tub end and the half-wall there is about 5 inches. It's tiled with 2 pieces of different cut sizes across that ledge. I'm doing the new tile for the tub box over the existing tile as I read I can do this and I need to because I started to shred the facing wall when I started to remove tiles. The thinset really bonded to the drywall and the builders didnt use luan or anything inbetween. I'm not rebuilding that box which would mean taking out the tub. Also, the existing tile is under the tub lip so I need to leave it there for what I'm doing. I remove the strip of tile closest to the half-wall. F me. Not enough room for faucet base and the other tile goes under the tub lip as mentioned. Chisel. Hammer. Bang. Room for faucet.

12. With a paddle bit I drill my hole. I now realize I need to put two pieces of tile I removed in the back row to have a flat surface for faucet mount. Done but when I tighten the faucet, it draws the tile up on the ends. Loosen faucet. What happens next is a DIY'er nightmare.

13. To put the levers on, you first have to remove the handles to take the assembly off the unit. They have a cap on the end that needs to be removed. The gap to start the thing was about 1mm wide. I couldn't get it off. I tried everything. No screwdrive would fit, even an eyeglass one. I finally scratched the shit out of it removing it with a pair of needle nose pliers.

14. Next was worse. The tiny tiny tiny screw inside needed to be removed with an Allen wrench which they don't supply, the effers. Ha! I have an entire drawer in my workshop doodads box filled to the top with Allen wrenches that I keep from everything I build with an Allen wrench. None of them fit. Too big. I take it to the workshop but nothing works. I can't even get it by sticking in needlenose pliers and spreading them while I turn. Shazbot! Do I need to go to HD again? Finally, a screwdrive I have with reversible ends has a tiny star like thing on one end that fits it. Steps 13 and 14 took a lot of time.

15. Measure holes. Drill hole. SGDMF! I forgot about the studs and hit just enough of the one stud that the assembly wouldnt go in the hole. Move over 3/4 inch and drill again. Now the rubber gasket wont hold tight unless I fill in the other hole since they intersect. Will fix that later. Starting to wonder where holes 4 and 5 will go. Shit. Put tiles under handle and now there isnt enough room to screw it in. Was made for something not very deep and I'm going through a tile, drywall and a 2x4. Removing tile it allows me to get bite and screw it on. Now I have faucet ON tile and handle below tile. This shouldnt matter as the tub top is being tiles in a "pebble" tile which is a plastic net with real polished pebbles glued on it. Anyway, a bitch to screw this on as in most fittings you would have room for a wrench before the connector coming out the side of the bottom came into play. Since I have the nut the entire way down the body, any attempt to use a wrench interferes with the side connector turning the entire assembly. How much are plumbers?

16. Drill right handle hole. Battery dead in drill. Swap batteries. Drill. Assemble.

17. I was correct. There is now no place for diverter handle or shower head. I can;t move them forward as another 2x4 is right under tub lip. Sigh. Get beer. Wife and kid get home at 5 to go to swim banquet at 6. I tell them, not ask, that I'm not going. Mad. Mad as hornet. Still, what else was I doing today and it's a learning experience.

18. Measure over from stud and cut a new hole in the wall to place the other handle and shower head on the other side of the stud. Ha! You can't fool me. Drill both holes. Ooops. Diverter should be closer to faucet but I made the hole 1/2" from stud and diverter assembly has 4 side connectors on it in a plus. No room for soft pipes if I do that. Sigh. Since holes are already drilled (and the other battery died as paddle bit isnt that sharp anymore so grandpap's plug in made an appearance) I'll put the shower head next. In.

19. Diverter handle in. Ha! Suck it faucet! Now let's just connect everything. NOOOOOO! The soft pipe that comes in the box with the faucet won't reach to the diverter on the other side of the stud! Maybe if I drill through the stud instead of going around? Nope. Back to HD.

20. Drive down to HD and buy 30" connectors. You don't scare me faucet. I also stopped and got a "Give me that fish" and a Shamrock Shake. Mmmmmmmm. Shamrock shake.

21. There was much belching.

22. Back to finish...and you guessed it, I wasn't paying attention after my long day and bought the wrong freaking size. I knew my supply valves were 1/2" as I just bought them Friday night but I grabbed 1/2" and 3/8" not by mistake, but I thought that's what I wanted for some weird reason.

23. Shower. Cursing. Belching. "Daddy's just frustrated honey, he's OK"

24. Home Depot opens at 10 on Sundays???? Why not 6? F ME IN THE A!

25. Tortured sleep.

26. Leg cramps. Walking. Ouch!

27. Pee, Belch

28. Push cat away, hot.

29. See 28.

30. See 28.

31. 5:20 Wide awake. I hate weekends.