Bathtub Diaries, Replumbed, Literally.

A little background on the plumbing at our house before we tackle the glitch. The person who redid the plumbing before we bought the house wasn't a plumber. To give you an idea of how bad it was, he'd cut through the floor joists to install the plumbing in the other bathroom. Thankfully, that was repaired by dear friend and contractor, Daniel Mikels and his father, when we remodeled the other bathroom a couple of years ago. We were aware the plumbing was kinda wonky in this bathroom as well and budgeted for it to be redone during the remodel.

It was assumed that the footprint of the bathroom would remain the same as seen in the photos below.

As you can see in the last photo, there was a linen closet which was going to be taken out to accommodate the five and a half foot tub (insert a happy dance here:). The lovely antique cabinet (purchased at The Lowcountry Living Room in Yemassee) was going to be the new storage. I designed the bathroom around this cabinet (it was my inspiration piece).

The night before the plumber was supposed to start, hubby and I were measuring everything out. We'd taken the length of the tub into consideration but not the width. And here lies the glitch. Because of the length and width of the tub, the inspiration-piece-cabinet was going to butt up against the edge of the tub meaning we'd only be able to open the left door halfway. Ugh with a side of panic. The only solution we could find, aside from getting another cabinet which was NOT an option, was to take off part of the wall you see to the right of the cabinet (oh please, let that be possible, I thought wringing my hands).

The next day, hubby contacted me at work and said it wouldn't work the way we planned but the plumber could reconfigure the layout (cue extreme panic music). We had a couple of options. One was to place the tub along the wall where you see the cabinet. Nope, I didn't like that idea at all. Walking into the bathroom and having a behemoth jutting out was not going to work for me (to give you a mental image, the cabinet is 16 inches deep, the tub is 30 inches wide which meant it would swallow that side of the bathroom). Next suggestion was to place the tub next to the vanity and move the toilet to the wall where the old tub used to be (confused yet? I was when they were saying I needed to make a major decision on layout with only a few minutes to consider because I needed to be in a meeting at that moment). After several tense moments of discussing the pros and cons of this last suggestion, I had to make a decision. Move the tub and the toilet or find a smaller cabinet.

Drum roll...we decided to place the tub next to the vanity. As panicked as I was about this decision, I now see it will work better than the original layout. A serendipitous outcome:). Below is the new layout. The toilet was moved from below the window and the tub will be plumbed there.