After finishing my water lines, my bathtub arrived, then I figured out I screwed up. My drain was too close to the wall on one side and not close enough to the other wall. Freaking fantastic… Now I have to relocate bathtub pipes. Let’s get to undoing!
Devising a pipe plan
In my previous post, I talked about how I had two layers of subfloor. Once I removed the first layer of subfloor, I was left with this. Here you can see the bathtub waste drain as well as the bathtub vent pipe. FYI, Vent pipes are there to allow waste gases to escape, so they’re kind of important.
I needed the bathtub drain pipe to be relocated to the exact spot where the vent pipe currently was. To get a better plan idea of what I could do, I needed to expose more of the pipes. Great… Nothing is ever as easy as it seems.
Exposing the pipes
Using my Skill saw, I cut a larger area in the subfloor to give me more room to work. I set the skill saw depth to only cut the depth of the remaining subfloor to ensure I didn’t cut into the joists.
Then I used an oscillating multi-tool to fully cut through the corner of the area I cut with the skill saw. I love this tool because it can do almost everything. And finally, I pried the board loose using a pry bar.
I don’t have a great picture of this because I had my needy assistant present, but you’ll see it in the next few steps.
After exposing the drain in the vent pipe, I realized I could relocate the vent pipe by changing the angles and cutting a new hole through the joist. Then I would be able to move the bathtub drain to my desired location. Let’s see how this goes…
Relocating the vent pipe
After a quick trip to home depot to get the appropriate pipe couplings, I was ready to roll. I statred by cutting the vent pipe one each end with a sawzall, and filed it to ensure it was square and smooth.
Next, I dry-fit the couplings to see where I needed to cut the hole in the joist and marked it.
I used a hole saw to cut a new hole in the joist. Just a side note, I hate using the hole saw for cutting bigger holes. You have to start slowly, then very slowly increase the speed of the drill or it will snag and the drill will catch and hurt your arm and/or hand. It sucks! And after it happened a few times, I was really scared I was going to break my arm.
Also, the joist is thicker than the depth of the hole saw, so I had to drill a hole through the center with a normal drill so that I could start cutting the other side in the correct spot. I cut through one side as far as it would go, the started on the other side. It took a long, long time, but I finally got through.
Next, I dry-fit the pipe and the couplings through the hole to see what adjustments I needed to make on the other side of the pipe.
Again, I cut the pipe with the Sawzall, measured, and cut the final vent pipe attachments to fit appropriately. Once I was satisfied with the position and fit of the pipe, I cemented the attachments together one at a time using ABS pipe cement. You’ll see the final picture in just a bit.
Relocating the drain pipe
I did the exact same thing with the bathtub drain pipe. I cut and measured extra pipe to get it in the desired location, dry-fit to make sure, and cemented it together. Here is the final product…
I also added a nail guard to the joist to protect it during the further renovation.
Replacing subfloor… again.
I’m not going to go into extreme detail, as my last post explained leveling the subfloor, but I’ll show you the steps.
First I had to replace the layer of subfloor I cut out. I simply measured, cut, and screwed it into place.
Last, but not least, I added the second layer of sublfoor to make the floor level and anchored the drain.
We placed the bathtub over the hole and it worked, thank God! Now I can finally start putting the walls up! This is finally getting exciting!