"I'll go find someone"

Aww Home Depot.  How we love and loath you.  First off, thank you for being only ten minutes away and almost always being open when we need you (except that one time you had just closed and we had to go somehwere else).  And thank you for employing people that almost always know what they are talking about, and for having other helpful customers come to our rescue when our faces say, "ugh, what?"  And thank you too for not having just one perfect fitting pipe that we need, but for having 4376 different choices for one piece of piping and other household materials.  Because seeing as we don't know much about one thing, but please, yes, throw in 4375 other pieces, just so we have the same amount of options and chances of getting more confused about remolding.  Enter the tub drain fiasco.

After we pulled out the old tub and took a closer look at the new one, we very quickly realized that the old drain piping (the floor) was not going to match up with the new drain.  The new drain was set about an inch further into the tub than the old one.  And of course the new drain piping did not fit onto the metal/copper water pipes in the floorboards, I mean come one, why would they want to do that?  Sooo, off to Home Depot we went, needing to find a 1/2" opening to fit around a 1/2" pipe (or something along those lines).

Once we arrived in the pipe/plumbing aisle, our hearts sank a few leagues.  This may help explain why:

There were only 4753 different choices of pipe pieces that could maybe, possibly be the one we need.  So, we strolled down the aisle, you know, acting like we're pros who have done this countless times before.  We found the 1/2 inch pipe opening section of the aisle and started our little scavenger hunt.

And of course (again) nothing was fitting together.  After about 37 trial and error fit tests, I went off in search of a worker....Word to the wise, you can always find someone in the kitchen/counter top area.  So the slowest moving guy in the world followed me back to plumping and herded us to another part of the aisle and showed us this:

You can tighten and loosen the ends to fit over different sized pipes...just what we thought we needed.  We bought a couple other pieces for any possible "just in case" situations (which we tend to have) and skipped back to the car to head home (ok, maybe I skipped and Matt walked).

After trying to make the new piece work as a connector over the in-floor pipes to the new drain pipes...we couldn't make it work...again.  The black pipe piece now made the drain too tall to fit under the bathtub...back to square one.

Over the next day, Matt figured out that we could use part of the old drain piping with the new drain piping, and the new black piece, to make the whole new drain work....no idea how, but he did. :)

Oh, and for the record....We realize that we don't 100% know what we're doing at every moment, or the exact terminology, but we're learning more every day and with each task we take on.  Think happy renovating thoughts for us! :)

"How you like me now?"

Demo-ing has quickly become my favorite new thing....seriously, what could be better than taking a hammer to drywall and ripping sh** up?  Um, nothing.  At least not in today's book.

Step one on day two....remove bathtub hardware:

Seriously, how gross is this shower?!  So happy to be getting rid of it.

Once the hardware was removed, we started ripping apart the drywall surrounding the tub and found another wonderful surprise from the previous home owner (who flipped our house).  No mold resistant drywall!  Ugh, don't even get me started on this guy.  You see, mold resistance dry wall is a must in areas where water is used a lot, a.k.a. the walls surrounding a shower.  Check out some happy time pictures below (not those kind, geeze):

And Matt cutting down the walls surrounding the ugly shower wall insert:

After cutting down those walls, we pulled and yanked, and shoved at the insert, trying to get it away from the wall.  And of course, the insert was not attached to any of the wall studs, only glued to the lip of the tub...way to go previous owner.  Fail.  So, once we realized we wouldn't be able to pull it away from the tub, we turned to my personal favorite method....bustin' sh** up.

And then......

Success!  Now, we realize this is probably not the best way to go about removing the insert, but it worked for us....we also did not have a reciprocating saw on hand.  Then finally, a few pulls later....

No more insert!  And for your enjoyment, you can see how excited I was to be able to see through the closet wall into the tub area:

After this, Matt was worried he was going to have to bust the tub apart with a sledgehammer because of some piping placement, but after going to borrow a sledgehammer from our neighbor Keith (who will probably have his own dedication post in the future...seriously, best neighbor ever), we learned (from Keith) that we only had to remove the pipe in order to get the tub out.  Which is exactly what Keith and Matt did while I watched and chatted with Keith's daughter.  Hey, I was supervising.  I forgot to get pictures of it, but I'm sure you get the idea.

Oh, and for the record....We realize that we don't 100% know what we're doing at every moment, or the exact terminology, but we're learning more every day and with each task we take on.  Think happy renovating thoughts for us! :)

~S~