Thursday, September 20, 2012

Well How's it Goin', Tubby?

As much as I would love to be writing a post about my chunk of a toddler, I'm actually referring to my bath tub.

Ya see, when we moved into our house, the tub shoe and the overflow cover plates in the bath tubs were pretty nasty looking. I'd scrubbed them, thinking it was just gunk built up on them, but no. The discolorations were actually because the metal finish had been either scrubbed off or eaten off by chemicals, allowing the metal to rust and deteriorate. Not GROSS (or, as gross as black mold or something), but not pretty.


Hey, ignore the rest of the "stuff" in there - I didn't remember to take a picture until after I'd already gotten all my tools in there and made a mess.. Yes, that's my story.

We've lived with it for the past 2+ years.

Well, that had to change today. Today, while scrubbing my tub, I decided to take the overflow cover plate off to scrub behind it...

Well... see for yourself....


This was the image that I emailed to Mr. Goats, asking if I could buy this




I got the go-ahead.

Thank goodness.

With about 20 minutes before Mr. Goats came home, I set to work changing these bad boys.

First, I took my blow dryer and warmed up the original shoe. This was supposed to make the plumbers putty easier to work with.



Here's where I give you the disclaimer that bathrooms/50mm lenses/unsteady hands make for bad pictures. Sorry.

There's a tool specifically for removing tub shoes (no, I don't think a shoe horn would work here), but I didn't have it and don't want to buy it. So I used an 11/16th wrench and a screw driver to unscrew the shoe.


This was surprisingly simple! I give the blow dryer all the credit.

Yum.




No, the old mustard looking stuff isn't some rare form of algae growing in my bath tub. It's the old plumbers putty.

I got that all cleaned up, then screwed a threaded brushing (that came with the stopper kit) into the drain and put a rubber gasket (also included) into the hole.

(this is a threaded brushing)


Rolled out some plumbers putty to about the width of a pencil and put it evenly around the lip of the shoe.


Then screwed that in tightly, causing some of the plumbers putty to "leak" out.


That just needs to be wiped away.

And the "hard" part is done!!

But wait, let's see the before/after together.


Ahhh, much better!

I always manage to over-explain everything, but this was really super simple. Managed to work on two bath tubs to get this done in under 20 mins. A well-spent 20 minutes, I'd say!

This was a "cheap" (ish) upgrade that, surprisingly, has a huge impact. $25/drain to make a clean bathtub look clean? Yes, please! This new finish, though, is making me think I need to upgrade the faucet/shower head/handles.

Maybe soon ;-)

Any plumbing-related projects going on with you? Tell me about them!

1 comment:

  1. I've never seen plumber's putty before! Learn something new every day!

    We every so 6 months or so have to snake our tub! Here's all the fun about it - http://29ruehouse.blogspot.com/2012/07/so-dirty-it-has-to-be-censored.html

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