DRAG AND DRILL: GO AHEAD. THAT LOOKS RIGHT. WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?

Continued from Part 1.

Now that that the tub has been refinished, it is time to drag it back into the bathroom. Claw tubs don't seem to have been designed for ease of handling, so a dolly is recommended. And a few extra hands.

Note the dolly--it's under the moving blanket.

Once the tub is in place—close enough is good enough at this point—it is time to determine where the plumbing will go through the floor. The easiest way to do this is to attach the drain plumbing to the tub, which involves loosely installing both the drain and the overflow fittings. Just snug them up hand-tight, and then install the drain plumbing which connects them. In the case of our plumbing, it had to be cut to fit, which is another case of loosely installing the pipes, marking them with a marker, and cutting after muttering the words, “close enough.”

Note the black marker mark on the pipe. The pipe 

had to be cut to the length shown, but--thankfully--

there was some room for error.

When installing the drain plumbing, you'll notice that there is a pipe which runs vertically down from the overflow fitting to the top of a T fitting. There is also a pipe which runs horizontally (slightly downhill) from the drain fitting to the aforementioned T. Then there is a third pipe which runs from the T fitting down through the floor. Locating the area where the third pipe runs through the floor requires that the first two pipes be loosely installed, as well as the T fitting.

The "horizontal" drain pipe (see the previous picture) isn't 

in this picture, but the vertical pipe is. Make it vertical, 

and cut it to length so that the T fitting lines up with the 

horizontal drain pipe. And pay no attention to those holes...

The pipe which runs vertically from the overflow fitting should be as described: vertical. It should not tilt or be crooked, as this can cause issues when connecting it to the drain plumbing under the floor, as well as causing issues where the pipe from the drain fitting connects to the T fitting.

Make it look like this. As for that hole in the floor,
again--my documenting skills are not very polished.

Once the overflow and drain pipes are temporarily connected to the T fitting—and the overflow drain pipe is checked to be vertical—it is time to mark the hole where the drain pipe will go through the floor. After checking to see that the tub is located where it should be—this often involves asking the opinions of significant others, so don't skip that part—put a mark on the floor under the T fitting. If you're living a lifestyle that can allow for a 1/4” of slack, then eyeballing this mark seems to be close enough. And if you can't live with that, then you should probably hire a contractor so that you can have someone other than yourself to complain to (and about) when the imperfect location of your claw tub somehow causes your house to burn down.

With the location of the drain plumbing hole marked, it is time to move on to marking the supply line holes. This seems to be a rather tough part of the measuring-and-marking process, as the supply lines are not as easy to position for the sake of marking. The problem lies in the fact that the tub is angled and curved where the drain and supply plumbing attaches to the tub—which means that they don't line up to start—and then the supply lines angle out away from the tub. Just do your best to measure and guess—the odds are pretty good that if your the centers of the supply holes in your tub are 3 3/8” apart, the two supply lines will be 8” apart where they go through the floor. And it seems that most of the write ups that I found had nothing to say regarding the distance from the center of the drain hole to the center of the supply lines. It's hard to describe, much less measure. But it seems like most supply holes would be between 3” and 3.5” back from the drain hole—I ended up going with 3.25” when I should have gone with 3” (the supply lines tilt slightly towards the tub), but everything hooked up without leaking. So there is some flexibility. What you're looking for is a hole configuration that looks like a squished Mickey Mouse look, but with tiny ear holes.

So, with that said...measure, guess, hope, and drill. The best that can happen is that it will line up perfectly. As for the worst, I'll let your imagination tackle that one.