Replacing My Old Fiberglass Bathtub With an American Standard Passage Alcove Tub - Thrift Diving

hey what's up Serena Appiah here from thrift diving calm so I'm standing here in my kids bathroom and there's one place that I never tackled in this bathroom and that is this avocado green shower/tub combination i even match the colors in the bathroom so that this wouldn't stand out like an eyesore that it would kind of blend into the room and it's been doing a pretty good job for my kids but now it's time to get an upgrade so for this video I'm teaming up with American Standard they are sponsoring this new shower this new tub that's going into my kids bathroom and we're gonna get a behind-the-scenes look at how easy the installation is and I'm gonna take you on a walk back through time so you can see exactly what this bathroom looked like before I got started years ago when I made it over seriously there was wallpaper everywhere it was horrible and guess what the tub the shower actually matched the toilet I'm not kidding you so I'm gonna take you back in time to everything that I've done to this bathroom and we're gonna finish this final piece of getting this shower out of here so stick with me because we're gonna do this video right now so the picture you see on the left is the bathroom what it looked like when we first moved in in 2010 well five years later I started removing wallpaper and this bathroom was going to get an overhaul and the picture you see on the right is what it looked like when it was after and I did everything new flooring very first toilet I removed and board-and-batten now I didn't want to remove this large vanity so I just painted it took down the wallpaper put up some new mirrors and it looked great now we've been doing something really cool here thrift i'veeen called bathroom week and you did see in my last video the toilet that I've removed well this was the very first toilet that I've removed so if you've got a toilet that looks like this please do go down to the description click that link and learn how to remove a toilet it's really not that difficult but there are some tips and tricks and one of the other videos that we covered this week for bathroom week was refinishing your tub of shower and you can find that link down below but sometimes you don't want to refinish you just want to replace and that's what we're gonna do in this video now I say we because I was actually filming but American Standard sent there amazing contractors to rip out and replace this entire shower and you're gonna get to see that right now and I have to admit when it was installation day I was so excited I had my camera ready I've never seen someone install a bathtub before so for me as a carpentry student this was a great learning experience so while one guy prepared the tub outside the other guy was inside removing this horrible backer board that was applied to the wall I mean trust me I know it's behind here when you remove this the whole wall is damaged you can find a link down below to the bathroom project that I did in my own master bathroom where I remove this exact same material from over top of my shower and trust me it was not easy and I was five months pregnant when I did it crazy to think of the things that I did anyway having this stuff come down was great and he had to take a hammer to it because with most tubs it's going to have a little lip that's behind the drywall so you can see that he's removing a lot of this here so that he could get his hammer behind it and then be able to pull this thing out but before he can do that he's actually got to cut it away and I'll admit I was a little naive I didn't know that you have to cut this thing out so he got his sawzall and just started making cuts so that he would be able to rip this stuff apart so as you can see it's taken a lot of power and a lot of time to take this stuff out now one thing that the contractors had mentioned to me is that they were taking great care to minimize damage so I really appreciated that because especially when you've got a crowbar in there you're gonna have some damage you might have some nail pops things that are coming out and you want to minimize that because it creates more work for you when you're done if there's a mess that you make when removing the old shower now unfortunately I didn't have a water shut-off here so we had to shut off the main water so one guy was working on the plumbing and the other contractor was working on removing all the fiberglass now you'll notice here they both have their eye protection and also their mask I had a mask on as well in eye protection because this stuff is nasty you can see that it looks like it was snowing I mean that's how much fiberglass fibers were floating around you don't want to breathe that stuff in to make sure that if you have demolition like this going on in your house that you do have the vents cut off and you are so wearing your protection so there were just a few more cuts they needed to make as well as scoring the caulk that was holding the tub in you see that he's taking a hammer here he's trying to create a hole so that he's got a place to put his reciprocating saw blade this is also known as a sawzall so with a few of those cuts they were able to lift this baby out in one piece but they still needed to cut it in half so once it was cut in half and they removed it there was like a sigh of relief and finally getting rid of this ugly green tub it was pretty easy for them to get the tub up the stairs I really thought that it was gonna be more massive and more difficult but it really wasn't so they put the tub in place but then we ran into a little snag now my old green tub was 32 inches well American standards tubs were thirty inches they didn't have a 32 inch so now we had to deal with the problem of alright how are we gonna make sure that we cover up this floor we'll deal with that later for now let's just make sure that everything is level and they did add a few shims to places where they needed to just to make sure that it was level and then it time to move on to the next part now typically these American Standard tubs and shower combination only take about a day to install but unfortunately because of that change in the size of the tub going from 32 to 30 the poor contractor I felt so bad for him he had other jobs lined up for that day and he had to push everything back because he needed to reroute the plumbing so I just thankfully he was amazing to talk to and we had great conversations while I'm sitting there filming and he's doing all the work but you see here that he's making some adjustments to the plumbing making sure that it's nice and tight and in place and once we were able to get through some of those adjustments because of the change in the size of the tub we were able to put up the drywall now you'll notice here the drywall is green this is the water resistant drywall that you use typically when you're doing tubs and showers so with a couple of screws well more than a couple but with some drywall screws he put everything in place into the studs and surrounded it now you'll notice he didn't go all the way up the wall and the reason why is because he was so sweet he actually had some panels that he was going to replace overtop of the shower but before we do that it was time to put on the passage wall panels now this is what makes this collection great because I believe it comes in four or five different colors this is the great concrete color and you'll see that it's nice and tight the contractors were gluing it to the wall it doesn't take a lot of effort but you just have to make sure that it's nice and tight and secure and they did now here's where they're actually providing me complimentary panels this wasn't part of the job but the guy liked me so much he's like yeah we can't leave these walls like this up top we don't want you to do any extra work we are going to provide these panels and it looks so much better than the panels that were there so we made the adjustments around all the plumbing and you'll notice at the top of the wall panels they put a trim and then they put more of the whiteboard so I thought that was very sweet of them to do and now it's time to move on to the very last step which is fixing this flooring you know like I said we had a 32 inch tub and now we're moving to a 30 inch so you got to repair the tiles the flooring in front of the tub now this is the flooring that installed five years ago when I did my kids makeover you can actually find that down below before their bathroom makeover but the idea here is that we would have to cut a piece of plywood and build up that subfloor so that there's something to glue the tiles to now thankfully by the grace of God had just a little bit of tile left this tile is discontinued so I hope I really really hope I don't need any more because I don't really have any more he cleaned up the area in front of the tub but the thing is is because of that flooring having a thickness I don't think it was 1/8 I think it was maybe like 1/32 of a thickness it still needed one little itty-bitty layer so he found a piece of material to put down he secured it with some drywall screws and then we were able to glue on to that and surprisingly it was just the right thickness because when he glued those tiles down and he put them into place he's actually locked together but when he locked them together and fit them into place you could see that it was like almost perfect and I was very happy that it turned out I was really worried about this part but it turned out really well and the last step was to just get that grout into the grout lines and then use a float to push it into the grout lines and let it dry for 24 hours and don't step on it so let's see what it looks like now because it looks so much better so if you remember this is what it looked like before we started I did like that it was easy to clean but it was green and very outdated but now it's modern it's fresh this American Standard passage alcove wall system is really great for any bathroom especially if you don't want tile you don't want to maintain tile and it's easy for the kids to clean and I was really concerned about the top above the wall panels but I'm really glad that they added an additional panel which is not part of the system but it looks really great and don't forget I've got new faucets and a nice shelf for the kids shampoo and conditioner and I was a little worried going from 32 to 30 inches that they wouldn't be able to fix this gap but they did an amazing job it looks good and I wanted to preserve this area so I wanted to pick out something that matched the concrete that the kids picked out for the wall panel so it looks good and now it's time for mommy to try this out mommy gets first dibs now it has been so long since I've had a bubble bath I was really looking forward to this I took the book in there and just really relaxed and enjoyed myself until this guy came in and said mommy get out my turn yeah so he enjoyed it too so if you've been wanting to replace your tub or shower and not just refinish it this is a good option definitely look into the American Standard passage alcove wall system collection go to the Home Depot it's actually about $500 for the material of course installation would be a little extra but this is a great option it's easy to clean there's probably about six different colors and it looks more modern which is what we wanted still got to do something about that vanity but maybe that's another video if you enjoyed this bathroom series be sure to give it a thumbs up come back again subscribe and I will see you next video

Channel: Thrift Diving

Views: 146,168

Rating: 4.8812828 out of 5

Keywords: DIY, Thrift Diving, thrift stores, home improvement, crafting, thriftdiving, american standard passage alcove tub replacement, replace bathroom tub, replace shower tub, bathroom makeover, fiberglass tub, fiberglass shower removal, American Standard, how to remove bathtub, bathroom makeover on a budget

Id: PdXuqXWbvuI

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 03 2019