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| It's below the window. |
We
bought an old house that had a claw tub in the bathroom. It was in
poor shape, but it appeared to be fairly solid.
If the
tub isn't located where you want it, then you'll need to disconnect
the tub from all of the plumbing and move the tub. This almost goes
without saying, though—if you find a claw tub in your house, and
it's exactly where you want it, and it's in good shape, then you
really don't need to be reading about how to install a claw tub. Just
leave it where it is and use it.
Refinishing:
Many of
these steps can be skipped if you take the tub straight to someone
who refinishes tubs. We weren't sure we wanted to do that, so the
next step is to strip the old finish.
On our
tub, the inside had a porcelain finish and the outside had a painted
finish. The tub itself was iron.
Given my
lack of management skills, I had a great idea for how to strip the
finish from the outside of the tub and clean up the porcelain on the
inside: assign the job to my wife. When she didn't have a job to do,
she could work on the tub. She did a great job.
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| Have at it. I don't know what else to tell you to do. |
I built a dolly for the tub out of 2X4's so that we could move the tub.
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| I sleep in that room now. |
To strip
the paint from the outside, she used a paint-stripper wheel and a
corded drill. It took the paint off, and also reveal just how rough
the outside of the tub was. The goal on the outside of the tub was to
strip as much of the finish from the tub as possible, revealing as
much of the iron tub as possible.
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| This is a paint stripper wheel. |
On the
inside, she used a few tools. For the flat enough areas (sides and
bottom of the tub), she used a palm sander with 150 grit sandpaper.
For the curved areas (corners, back of the tub), she used sandpaper
and foam sanding blocks. For the inside of the tub, the goal was not
to strip the porcelain—sandpaper might be able to do that, but it
would probably take years. The goal on the inside of the tub was to
remove as much of the corrosion and damaged surface (there was plenty
of this) as possible, leaving only a solid surface for filling and
finishing.
While my
wife was working on it, we rolled the tub all over our house while we
worked on the different rooms of the house. Once she was done
stripping the tub, we sent the tub home with my in-laws. They took
the tub to their farm, where they proceeded to further strip the
outside of the tub by sandblasting it.
Then the
tub sat for what seems like years. Maybe it was. Math isn't my thing
when I'm writing.
Eventually
we decided that we wanted to get the tub refinished (not refinish it
ourselves, and we also decided against installing a jetted tub). We
took it to Surface Solutions, a company (one guy, really) who
specializes in refinishing claw tubs at his farm near Shelton, NE.
He did a
great job. The generalized version of his refinish technique involves
stripping the tub (already done, in our case), filling the pitted and
damaged areas with reinforced filler, and then spraying the inside
and outside of the tub with enamel. The results nowhere near as
durable as the original porcelain finish, but the finish is beautiful
and is said to last for years (it has a five year warranty) if cared
for properly. That Ajax cleanser stuff you use on your tub? Don't use
it on an enamel-finished claw tub. It will explode.
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