Note to folk doing renovations

The basement bathroom in our lovely home has a roman tub. Big, beautiful thing. You can almost swim laps in it. Yes, this is a bit decadent, for a basement bathroom off a spare room. But then, we didn't put it there.

Anyway, whoever did put it there, well, they obviously weren't thinkin' too hard when they did about the fact that mechanical stuff does break down now and then.

Yep. Fun stuff, finding out that the handheld shower's tube has cracked so any attempt to turn on the water means water goes just about everywhere but through the showerhead, and the hose is attached (like most of the stuff mounted on the deck of a roman tub) to a fixture under the tub...

And it's all sealed in. Real tight. Like, behind a layer of tile and two layers of plywood tight. No access panel, no nuthin'. Whoever did this musta figured them fixtures wuz forever.

This, by the way, is par for the course for our place. Place is absolutely lovely inside, in places. Some real thought has obviously been put into it, over the years, making things pretty...

But little things like actually installing sound plumbing behind all those pretty fixtures, and leaving actual openings into the attics via which they can be inspected, those are the sorta things it seems some previous renovators skimped on a bit, here and there.

Fortunately, I'm a veteran.

Twenty minutes or so after I've figured out there's no real way 'round it, I've got one of my drills, my jigsaw, and my reciprocating saw out, various masonry and tile blades and bits at the ready. Forty minutes later, I've cut a hole for access, and have got at the plumbing (and am discovering, as you'd figure is only typical in our place, that there's only something like two inches between tub and wall in which to move the wrenches actually to get the tube off). Inside of an hour and a bit, the tube's off (and I'm discovering it's an odd custom thingy ya can't just go fetch from Home Depot, which is also quite typical).

And, by the next morning, I've got the appropriate replacement tube from a speciality plumbing supply shop that groks roman tub fixtures, and have put a reasonably pretty cover plate over the access hole (removable, naturally, since today's lesson is mechanical stuff does break now and then), and we're on our way.

Note to folk doing pretty renovations: it's really a lot more trouble cutting through tile and plywood with masonry blades and bits without scuffing the neighbouring tile than it is to design an access panel into the thing in the first place. Thanks in advance.