The Kaldewei bath from Trading Depot came complete with a set of legs included within the already great price (these are usually an extra £25 or so). They were a bit fiddly to assemble onto the bath, but once fitted they are really sturdy and have a good range of height adjustment.
A quick check of the plumbing route with the bath temporarily in position. Because the floor has never been screeded in the bath area, one side is much lower than the other. I could have just extended the adjustable feet on the deeper side, but figured that raising the floor at the necessary points would be a neater option. In any case, I had an old bag of readymix concrete that needed using.
...but first it was necessary to complete the plumbing as some of the pipework will be held by the concrete platforms. After much deliberation, I decided to retain the existing section of cold water pipework which was under the floor, but carefully extracted the old hot water pipework for replacement.
With the pipes cut to length, they were cleaned, fluxed, carefully assembled and soldered...
...and then joined to the incoming feed from the lobby which I had installed previously. I opted for 15mm compression fittings here as I didn't want to risk melting the washing machine waste pipe by soldering them. It's a slightly unconventional route but makes best use of the existing pipe run.
At the other end, the assembly was bedded into a layer of sand before a layer of mortar was added to set it in place. At this stage all pipes are terminated with isolating valves which will facilitate easy future servicing and will keep the water in place until I make the final connections to the taps.
I've soldered new pipework to the outside tap and have tee'd this off ready for the cistern. Temporarily, I've capped this off with a push fit end stop.
Hot and cold feeds are now ready for both the basin and bath.
With the pipework all in place, I could then set about making the concrete plinths for the bath to stand on. Some off-cuts of timber were screwed to the subfloor, concrete poured between them and levelled off with a trowel.
Before the concrete set hard, the battens were removed to facilitate quicker drying.
Battens were then screwed to the walls to provide solid support for the top of the bath. The challenge here was not only to get each one perfectly level, but also to get them both at exactly the same height. Lower frame rails, cut from lengths of 38mm x 63mm C16 framing timber were trimmed and rebated to accept the uprights and then screwed securely to the floor using some hefty 4" no12 screws.
With the bath set onto the battens, it was then carefully levelled in each axis using the adjustable legs. Upper frame rails were cut and rebated to mirror the lower ones and temporarily clamped to the underside of the bath.
Uprights were cut slightly oversize and then carefully trimmed until they were a snug fit between upper and lower frame.
The new bath waste and trap components are from Screwfix. The waste has a fairly decent quality chrome plated brass plug and should look quite good when fitted to the bath.
The waste, overflow, taps and flexible braided tails have been assembled and fitted to the bath.
The lower walls and the side of the bath will be finished with Geom softwood beaded T&G cladding. This has been unpacked in advance of being fitted as it needs to acclimatise and will need priming on both sides to seal it.
Jacqui has put the finishing touches on the pantry, with a final topcoat of Dove Grey on the window frame and a thorough clean of the floor tiles.
After several unsuccessful attempts to give away all the old bricks from the fireplaces by advertising them on Gumtree, Jacqui has bagged them and taken them to the local tip. We just need to get rid of the old bath now and the back yard will be clear once again.
We finally had the two broken windows repaired this week. Getting companies to even quote for this work proved challenging. Wades took over a month to send their quote but, in stark contrast, Able Group came and measured up on the same morning we called them, gave us a quote immediately and did the replacements two days later.
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