Our house has an antique cast iron lion foot bathtub in the main bathroom. I say main because at sometime a previous owner built a makeshift bathroom in the basement, but really this house only has one bathroom. The basement is an unfurnished limestone basement. The “bathroom” down there has no walls; it’s just a toilet in a corner of the basement with a crude shower built next to it. There are no walls surrounding it. For years we never had a real shower to use.

That is until today. After years of putting it off, I finally installed a shower in the bathroom. Well actually I bought a conversion kit to turn the lion footed bathtub into a shower. We like the antique tub and didnÂ’t want to get rid of it. That and the fact it weighs a ton and is on the second floor also helped the decision. I really didnÂ’t want to have to move the beast if I didnÂ’t have to. Due to many other reasons I just never got around to converting the tub. Mainly it was because of laziness. Hey, IÂ’m not denying it.

A couple of weeks ago the faucet on the tub started leaking. It wouldnÂ’t turn off completely. The best we could do was slow it to a fast drip. Mainly it would just run as off the faucet was cracked open. All right, I needed to replace the faucet. If I was going to do that, I might as well install the shower. That was when I discovered that most of the local hardware stores do NOT stock the shower conversion kits anymore. I guess they figure that if a house had a lion footed tub, it would have been converted by now.

After searching for weeks I went to a locally owned hardware store, Nicholson Hardware. People, this is the best hardware store on the planet. It is stocked with just about everything you could look for in home improvement. Not only that but the staff is not only knowledgeable in all things hardware and home improvement, but also they are courteous, helpful and extremely eager to please. The only problem with this hardware store is its business hours. Monday through Friday 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM. ItÂ’s a contractorÂ’s hardware store, hence why they have everything under the sun.

When I entered I found the new faucet easily enough, but I couldnÂ’t find the rest of the stuff to make it into a shower. I asked the clerk and he told me that I could buy it piece by piece, or they had an all-inclusive kit that contained all of the parts. He then told me that the kit would be cheaper then buying all the part piecemeal. Sure enough he was right.

Ktreva was excited over the prospect of finally having a useable shower in the house. My father, the plumbing and electrical engineer, came over to give me a hand installing it. It only took about an hour and now all it needs is a couple of shower curtains and we are ready toÂ… well shower I guess.

Now I donÂ’t have to worry about falling asleep in the tub in the mornings.

Posted by: Contagion at 07:34 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 548 words, total size 3 kb.

1 Congrats on your leap forward in time!

Hey, you know you didn't need to get a new faucet... you could have gotten new seals and packing for the old. Gravy job.

Posted by: That 1 Guy at June 14, 2006 08:19 PM (gMMvi)

2 You are the bestest husband ever. I know Ktreva has got to be over the moon.

A shower.

In her own house.

You deserve...well, somethin' special! ;-)

Posted by: Tammi at June 14, 2006 09:38 PM (L7a63)

3 Ah - so you're saying the last two years of me asking "Why don't you add on a shower kit" and you saying "Because it's physically impossible, they don't make them to fit these pipes or a way to covert them" was really your way of saying "Eh, I don't feel like it" huh?

Posted by: Shadoglare at June 14, 2006 10:13 PM (4VtjK)

4 Yeah, I was going to call bullshit too, but Shadoglare beat me to it. I even found the kit in a catalog and you argued it wouldn't fit.

You're right about one thing though, Nicholson's rocks.

Posted by: Graumagus at June 15, 2006 02:21 AM (zEZuj)

5 Yay! Now she won't have to wait till you take her to a hotel to shower!

Posted by: oddybobo at June 15, 2006 08:11 AM (6Gm0j)

6 Those locally owned hardware stores are the greatest thing ever. We have one in my town, it been here, I think, since the dawn of time. If you are looking for the obscure, and someone who knows all about the obscure, the locals are the best. I have been looking for parts before, went to Farm King, Menards, Lowe's, putting almost 100 miles on the truck, should have started with the 1 mile each way to the local store.

Posted by: Petey at June 15, 2006 11:26 AM (mNqaI)

7 Shadoglare: If I remember correctly you where refering to the whole shower kit because we talked about replacing the tub. Those won't work in the house.

Grau: I don't recall talking with you about it. But we might have.

Posted by: Contagion at June 15, 2006 05:01 PM (aGJp4)

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