In article ,
dgk wrote:

On Thu, 3 Dec 2009 10:06:39 -0800, "Bob F"
wrote:

dgk wrote:
On Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:00:02 -0600, Jules

1) Buy a new bath & faucet, get a plumber in to sort that out. That
same plumber could chop the pipes to the shower and (temporarily)
cap them, then you can rip the shower out yourself (saving a few $$).

If by new bath you mean ripping out the old tub and putting in a new
one, that is a bit of a job. I was sort of hoping I could just
refinish the current one. Having read more, I feel less confident that
this is a good solution. Ripping out a tub apparenlty means total gut
of the bathroom.

You are probably going to have to re-do the tile in the tub area. If you are
doing that, you might as well replace the tub. It'll look and last way
better
than a refinish job, and maybe cost less if you do the work.

You could re-do the tub first, then take out the shower, which will solve
the
no-shower problem.

The window in the tub area will be a problem for a shower there. Shower
spray
and windows don't necessarily work together. I finally installed a second
shower
curtain over the window to solve that on my rental house.



Thanks all. The more I look into it, the more it looks like a gut job.
The question becomes who should do it - I really don't think I'm the
one. Maybe if I was retired and had lots of time.

You can do it. Just cut yourself down from 4 hrs. to 3 hrs of TV
watching every night. Spend the other hour chipping away at it, a piece
at a time.