Detaching A Tub Spout 101...or...How to NOT hunt down the previous owners of this home and beat them silly with a pipe wrench. (Don't worry - wouldn't do that...but thinking about it seriously at this moment).

Ugh - we are into week 382...or..um....52....or whatever of home repairs so we can get this house on the market! Up today is the blasted tub/shower in the main bath. Under the crappy glue-up shower walls (exhibit A), there was what appeared to be rotten/wet drywall. Whether this was a poor caulk job or a plumbing issue or what we wouldn't know until we took down that shower wall and looked.

Well...first you have to unhook the shower head, drain thingy and tub spout so you can get the wall off. I learned a little lesson in detaching a tub spout HERE. Apparently there is the type that requires an allen wrench and then there is the type where the whole spout screws on to the pipe. We had the latter. So we followed the INSTRUCTIONS , which said it would just screw off. WRONG. In fact, after following instructions to a T, it snapped the copper pipe completely OFF! Why? You might ask? Because...take a look here....you are looking INSIDE the tub spout from where it would hook on to the wall/pipe.

Ok - now see way in there? See that white crap all around at the top of the picture? Kind of looks like caulk? Well, it is NOT caulk...it is apparently some sort of cement/super-glue crap that they put on the threads and then quickly screwed on the tub spout....the tub spout that would ONLY come off of the wall by unscrewing it from the pipe....but of course that couldn't happen now....because it had been permanently affixed to the pipe! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Next we tried to pry off the wall boards - thinking we could get them off in one piece and reuse them. Wah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! As-if! These cheap (and dare I say deceptive) people LOVED them some GLUE! So crack - there goes that idea. Now we have a plumbing project AND have to replace all of the boards lining the tub/shower area.

Now - back to our original problem....the wet drywall (or what we THOUGHT was drywall) by the base of the tub...behind the shower board. Well....turns out there is about a 2-3 inch gap between the drywall, which is partially covered with something called DuRock (a water-resistant and mold-resistant material probably not recommended for behind a shower wall). This gap was filled in NOT with actual drywall...but "mud" - which I believe is a a drywall compound or heavy-duty spackle-like material. So the fact that it was wet and crumbling away was probably more an issue of the material used and not that it was getting wet. Here's the gap I'm talking about (just above where the tub ends and the "wall" begins:

So now we are researching what to use there - GREEN BOARD I would imagine? Still researching options. Anyway - you can be sure we will be doing the RIGHT thing...even though the right thing is a pain in the tookus. Why? Because we want the next owners of this home to be assured that THIS owner did things the right way...even though we know we'll be leaving. If you find something half-a** around here...it wasn't us...and we just hadn't found it yet or we would have fixed it.

Man, blogging is therapeutic! I'm just steaming mad now...no desire to hit anyone with a pipe wrench! Shwew. But stay-tuned...things could change.