got a bathtub, yea..

[phil]

we had an old bathtub up at out family summer place. I vaguely remember when it was installed in the house and we used it but My dad quickly renovated and built an addition so it was parked under the porch of the cabin when I was about 15 or so.
well fast foreward many years. It still looked pretty good, it was covered up and so I managed to get the thing in my van and brought it home.

the undereath was a bit rusty. looks like it never was really painted other than house paint. I cleaned it up and sprayed a couple coats of black gloss paint on the underside so it looks a bit more presentable. I took the feet off they had a few coats of milk paint and looked old but I couldn't see trying to keep that patina, since who wants it all rusty..

so I put some borax in a tub and a heavy steel bar along with it and the parts and connected that to my battery charger. I left it about 5 days now and took it out and cleaned all the rust that had accumulated on my steel bar. It took most of the rust and paint off so it might just have a thin rusty film on it..

the feet have a sort of ball and claw design so I thought I might paint he feet gold and then the ball black to show the details, maybe the claw could be a third color.
Ill try spraying them gold first anyway and I can post the results when I have pics of that. the enamal sure is thick and it has a few spots where it;s chipped but I thin its fine. I can touch up any chips and it will suit my 1924 house.

now I have my tub in the back yard and it needs to come up about 5 feet to the deck . I can see how getting a bunch of people together to move it might be difficult so Im thinking of raising it to the level of the deck by adding blocks and then sliding it in on planks. I can move it myself but I can't lift he dead weight of it myself and it must be 300 lbs or something.

I figure I might be able to put he tub in an unused bedroom for now and connect it and that may help me get by if I tear the bathroom out. it has a lot of 70's tile and a tub installed that's probably 50's or 60's or so.

spent much of the summer fixing up old cars rather than working on the house. I had three that died and each was a misery that I managed to work through. Im hoping that will get me by and if one fails I can use another. Its hard to work on them in the rain and I do the maintenance myself. I had one 1990 volvo that i decided to pull the engine out of. since I didn't have an engine lift I dropped the whole front end out so now the engine is sitting on the front crossmember and wheels but detached form the body.. I have another car just the same so I figured i'd pull all the good parts and get rid of one of them..

we had 3 alunimum boats up there and my brothers both took one home so I did too. There was a little baot trailer so I put new bearings and wheels on it and towed it back.. I have a little 4 horse and got my fishing licence but never actually got to go fishing. while i was up at the summer place I cut a lot of grass and fixed the old john deere garden tractor. we have a lot of willows up there near the lake so it's a constant battle to get them back under control.

there was another old trailer made from the front end of some old 1930's car. the trailer was made of wood even the tongue was wood. It was old and neat but not suitable for any road so I took it apart brought back the front end and wheels and the front end (with the spindles welded) thinking I might make a neat trailer with the wire wheels. the bolt pattern is similar to a lot of trailers with only 4 bolts.

I'm still part way through installing all my baseboards and casings , I just needed time so I slid it all aside. i had begun making some wainscott from flooring but Just haven't had the shop time to move that ahead.

a friend bough tan old snooker table and the pockets were old 1930's cloth ones with leather around th epockets. they have this contraption to lift the balls up and the leather had all worn on two of them. I glued them back together and put cloth tape behind the tears. I filled the voids and small rips with speed sew and wood dst and it seemed to work ok.. at least they are original and e wont need to fit new ones. the table is huge , all quartersawn oak so I helped him coat it with danish oil and turpentine and it came up very beautifully.

he has a warehouse with 3 tables and has a lot of friends coming and going to play pool , these guys are so good at it but I play my best and I'm learning a bit. Im not bad but some of them are really good players. Its a pleasure to get time on a decent table without a lot of issues like in bars or pool halls. I'm happy to loose the game and if I make a few good shots I'm happy with that.

phil

[phil]

so I painted my tub underneath, sprayed it black and I cleaned the feet with electrolysis and painted them black. i think Ill paint the balls white and maybe I can paint the claws to enhance them a little.

I managed to move the thing up beside my porch and stacked wood under it until I got it up about 4 feet in the air and slid it on planks onto the balcony and through the door. It will have to turn sideways to make it through the inner doorways. Maybe I can strap it to a dolley. It was a feat to move it myself. back in the 20's gravity must have been a lot weaker. Man the thing is heavy..

On the weekend I also bought a wall mount toilet tank. It has a patent date of 1901 and it's oak and made to be mounted to the wall. the flush mechanism is mostly there and has two glass balls, one is the float and one acts as the flapper and has a seal. The lid is missing but it was basically just an oak plank with a profile on the edge so I can make a new one. with these ld ones the tank is a separate thing so I guess I can mix and match bowls. maybe there are repros?

now Im looking for a suitable toilet bowl but they are pretty scarce out here. I may be able to hook it to a regular toilet bowl , but the old ones had the water going in from the backside and the modern ones couple with a tank that sits on top. It seems feasible to just make it enter the top and use a modern bowl but I'd like to find an authentic one if I can. it should make cleaning easier because the wood tank wont sweat so much and it doesnt; have this area of bad access. cleaning behind the heavy tub might be another thing. I figure I can tile it and slope the floor so I can wash back there and not create a pool.

my bathroom has a little wall between the tub and toilet and it seems It will need to come down to make room for the tub, and all the tile has to go, it's 1970's era stuff. Ill need to completely strip the bathroom and so I will try to temporarily install the tub in a bedroom so it doesn't prevent us from cleaning ourselves I figure I can hook it up to the fittings for the washing machine with Y fittings and hoses, for now.

the cabinets I have are also really old but not that special . its got a really low countertop. I'm not sure if I want a cabinet or maybe just a pedestal sink.

[phil]

some pics of the toilet tank. I guess it's fumed oak , very well fumed

at first I thought it would go higher up on the wall and I guess it could be mounted like that but I can see the little rubber bumper that the seat was to hit so that proves it wasn't mounted up very high from the floor, maybe a foot or so.

neat to see the hand blown glass float and stopper. I guess Ill need to figure out how to recreate the rubber seal part. I'm not sure if it has a water shutoff for when the tank fills up maybe that part needs to be modern. I need to try to find out how it worked. looks like the water supply hose must have run up inside through the bottom. If I press the flusher thing then it lifts an arm which was attached to the glass which acted as the flapper. as it fills the flusher lifts up and that little brass rod underneath sort of disappears so you can see how full it is from looking at the brass part.

[Gothichome]

A vintage water closet, what a great find. Interesting to see how things were done before the age of plastics. As you have probably already researched these low tank systems had a short pipe with a 90 degree bend and were still attached to the wall. The down pipe connected to the bowle from the side at the back rather than attached to the top at the back. It would be great to find a proper period bowl. Looking at the hole, I don’t think it will be hard to flange some thing together to make in functional once again.
We bought a used repro high tank for our bathroom project. It looks a bit tacky (I think) but it was cheap. All modern mechanicals so repairs will be easier than hunting down a hand blown glass float.

[phil]

we once had a house trailer and the toilet had cracked, there was not enough room, or availability was an issue so my dad stuck the tank from a modern toilet up on the wall. it had a really great flush because of the fall or drop. I wondered if I should mount it higher than intended. I figure I may need to pipe it into a more modern bowl but I think it will be possible, making up a lid and sorting out how to make the flush mechanism work will be a challenge but doesn't seem insurmountable. I found images of others like it but it's pretty rare, a bit older than my house. there is a similar one over on Vancouver island a bit more money , that one has a copper liner. this one looks older. This one was only 40 bucks so I didn't go too far wrong. lots of pricey stuff on ebay and such. maybe parts from europe would give the impression of age due to the differences in design without being super rare but the shipping would be lots. The tub has a fawcet with a place where you can hook a hose up and I think they are no longer approved due to the possibility of it causing a backflow issue and polluting the city lines. I guess it could have a backflow valve or check valve in the feed line. I have some of the nickle plated plumbing parts but the nickle isn't great and the cover for the overflow is missing. I assume parts like that can be had, the tubs aren't; that hard to find. the one I have has pretty good porcelain so it should work ok as it is. Ill hunt around and try to sort things out and finish up some other stuff i started like my baseboards and casings and wainscott, eventually ill plan to gut the bathroom maybe hire a tiler.. I have a little wall between the tub and toilet that contains the shower fititngs so I will need to remove that because the tub is longer than what's there. Id like to put in a floor drain and slope the whole floor a little, maybe it's trap can be kept wet from the sink drain or something. I remember a house that had a thing hooked to the hot water and every time you used hot water it dribbled some into the trap to keep it wet.

[Gothichome]

Phill, our repro high tank uses a standard bowl, they have manufactured an adapter plate for connecting the down pipe. Nothing supper fancy, well within your skill set. A bit dark now for a picture but I will post one shortly.

[Gothichome]

The picture.

[phil]

Im sure I can connect it , making it look right is another thing. i have to remove the little wall between the tub and toilet and the tub's drain will be exposed. I have most of those nickle plated parts but the nickle is a bit worn. i wondered if I might be able to electroplate them myself or if I should go to a chrome shop. Maybe an option s to use brass or to put he pipes within a brass pipe, or something.

the floor has crappy 70's tile. I can either restore the floor to wood ( epoxy it?) or maybe I can go with a tile similar to the one you chose. It looks nice and it's nice to have the waterproofing tile provides. Im sort of considering just using wood wainscot and epoxying it. we wouldn't usually use much wood in a bathroom today but maybe in older times it was more common to.
It gets pretty steamed up in there now , someone likes taking basically saunas.. I installed a vent but I need to add a fan and maybe a humidity sensor to turn it on automatically. I kept seeing silverfish in there so I put some ajax on the floor , swept it around and left some in the corners intentionally so they would need ot crawl through it. I haven't seen any since but the things creep me out. lowering the humidity would likely help. I could have some leakage past the cap and under the lead flashing and Im having trouble getting the right lead cap. I might just make one from copper or something like I did with some of the others. The lead caps cover the edges of the flashing and are not common now. Ive made a few trips to the plumbing store and up onto the roof in a part I hate going and I keep getting lead caps that don't fit. the last one was a 2 inch cap but I guess the pipe is 1 1/2 ID or something. even a slight drip there could wet the inside of the walls. I think when I get there Ill pull out the old pipe and just connect it to the vent but go through the foor because the sink plugs where it enters the pipe and makes a sharp bend. Its hard to access in the wall behind the sink. I'm ok converting whats not seen to plastic, then it's easier to maintain than threaded black iron. the old copper piping is old and getting thin, so I should switch all that over to pex.

I figure Ill put the tub in my spare bedroom temporarily. I might hook it to a pump to drain it into the same as the washing machine which is in there and feed it with hoses for the short term. I'm discarding a maytag washer so I took the pump thinking I can put a little motor on that to drain the tub for a while or I could put the tub on a platform and use gravity. the spare room already has a washer and dryer and a little toilet stuck in the corner of a closet. Its adjacent ot the bathroom. I put in murphy bed for occasional guests. I might open the wall of the bathroom which could allow me to turn them around and then the laundry access would be from the bathroom. My house has two original bedrooms plus the attic bedroom so I hate to use one of the bedrooms for laundry or it's basically a two bedroom house. at one point I was thinking of renting bedrooms and found myself explaining that if they wanted that bedroom they would have to agree to access for laundry which isn't ideal. If the laundry can be accesed from the bathroom then it's a bit less of a privacy issue for the person that uses the room. since there are only two of us now and we are too old for kids, it's not a problem but for resale value it should probably be fixed so the laundry isn't involved in either bedroom on the main floor.

that toilet has a wide ledge at the back so maybe it lends itself well to the adaptation. Yes I can see how they made up a plastic adapter plate. It's proably not important if thewater enters the toilet through the backside or as most do , like that one from the top.

i thought maybe I culd plumbit together and put it outside or somehting so I can flush it and foola round wiht it, maybe experiment with lifting the tank up higher. i really like the idea that it could help make cleaning behind the toilet easier. thats a job no one likes and modern toilets are still hard to access behind, and they sweat. at least the wooden tank may not sweat so much as the porcelain ones do.

[Mick_VT]

Hey Phil, nice tank. Poke around on www.deabath.com they have all the parts for everything (though are not the cheapest) it's a good resource for "what do I need for" type questions. they are also very responsive with advice by email in my experience.

As you worked out it is a low flush not a high flush, tank sits in the usual place on the wall. I would recommend a new liner before you do much else. You can get them in metal as the original or plastic (cheaper)

[phil]

thanks Mick , Ill see. someone just gave me a water can to fix, its to pressurize plumbing. its like a tin gas can. the bottom of the can rusted so it leaked the water out.. I was just putting some braising rod over the bottom of it to strengthen it up . I might be able to do somethign similar but it is galvanized. smoke from galvanization isn't great from a health perspective. there was a copper lined one over on Vancouver island for sale. about 200 or so..