There, I said it. But it's sort of necessary (and evil, as the saying goes), and so it had to be done. Starting with a good ol' fashioned Cutting Into Our House's Plumbing party. In this case, it was copper supply lines running to the old tub shower. It's good times having water spraying all over, even after having shutoff the main and bled all the faucets in the house (note to self: the faucets outside the house are below even these supply lines in the basement ceiling, so need to be bled, too).
Anyway, these are the new PEX (Sharkbite) 1/2" shutoff valves I installed, and the PEX running up into the new tub/shower cavity. Next up... the valve. Similar to how I did it in the other bathroom, I zipped a 1x6 in half on the table saw after drilling a 2-1/2" hole, threaded the four 1/2" Sharkbite connectors, then clamped it down tight -
K joked when I was threading them about how, with all our fancy advancements, plumbing still requires wrapping threaded pipe ends with teflon tape. I pointed out, however, that this Sharkbite stuff really is a leap forward. Seriously. It's the only thing that makes plumbing bearable.
It wasn't too tough to get the tub and shower stub out installed -
The only tricky part was being pretty exact for the tub because the tub faucet threads onto the 1/2" nipple - and it needs to A) thread as tight as possible so it doesn't leak while B) butting perfectly up against the finished tile. Kohler said to measure 4-1/8" from the end of the nipple to where the finished wall will be. Of course, there is no finished wall - so I had to guesstimate using a scrap of 1x to mimic the 3/4" thickness (1/2" cement board + 1/4" tile). Crossing fingers after the wallboard and tile are installed the faucet fits right because, well, at that point it'll have to fit right.
That said, the shower and valve (once the work of clamping it to the 1x6 was done) were easy. I also glued the PVC drain fitting to the ABS P-trap with a special, slimy, green glue concoction. And yes, I made a special trip to Lowe's and spent $6 to get it - I don't mess with plumbing fittings, and assume that if it's recommended to use this glue for that and that glue for this... I'll do it.
Then the fun part - testing the tub!
So I cleaned it out, installed the overflow drain cover and drain plug -
Then filled 'er up!
Once it was full... turned on the jets! And... nothing. Drat. Went down to the breaker box thinking I may have switched off the breaker. Nope, it was on. Back up to check the outlet. Doh - it was dead. I dunno how the GFCI tripped, but it did. Hopefully that doesn't happen too often, although I'll be installing an access panel in the wall at that end of the tub in order to get at it in case it does. But still, hopefully it doesn't...
Anyway - flipped the GFCI back on and presto... jets!
Oh man. That was the sound of luxury, I'm not gonna lie...
Too bad K discovered a leak in the drain fitting under the tub (we can look up at it to access through the basement ceiling, which is convenient - and will be to fix it). So I'll have to take apart the drain and rethread it all to reseat the rubber seal. Bleh.
But the fun wasn't over... it was time to once again throw a House Plumbing Cutting party, and disassemble the galvanized supplies for the new vanity. Yep, it was wet and messy again - but we got the new PEX supplies fitted and ready to go -
Oops. Despite literally writing on the back of the drywall 'H' and 'C' for 'Hot' and 'Cold'... I still installed blue PEX (indicating cold) on the hot supply, and red on the cold. I'm retarded. It doesn't really matter, but I'll probably fix it cos it'll bug me. Which means shutting off the water and bleeding the lines again - oh well.
What remains then - besides those couple of fixes - is hacking off that cast iron drain pipe running to the vent on the right. I'll cut it off with a sawzall just above the floor joist, slip on a no-hub coupler and run ABS to line up with where the new drain will need to be, and attach it to the existing drain stack (which I'll also need to cut off, and likely run ABS up through the roof flashing - hopefully I'll be able to just stick a new ABS pipe through it without having to mess with it).
It'll look something like this -
And when all said and done... this (the sketch on the lefthand page) -
Onward...
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