Keep a Prewar Tub or Not?
I have a cast iron prewar tub, but it requires a few creative design solutions to make it work for my taste. Firstly, the shower head is smack in the middle of the tub so if I move it to be length wise, the drain holes will be on the opposite side of the tube. Also, I would have to get custom cut curved glass (impossible to find), so I am stuck with a shower curtain.
My options are to
1) Remove tub all together and make a free-standing shower
2) Put in a shorter alcove tub (less than 60 inches) and reconfigure the bathroom.
The reason for the shorter tub is because the bathroom is long and narrow.
Is a shorter bathtub such a big mistake? Is having a cast-iron bathtub really that great, or is it just dated?
Guest User | 5 years and 6 months ago
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stevecym | 5 years and 5 months ago
this is only a personal opinion type thing so i stayed out. but now that dibs shared his always honest opinion i will say, while it is nice to keep some old elements in a house, the bathroom is one room you should modernize. when you get older (i am moving in that direction now and things that did not bother me 20 years ago are becoming an inconvenience) you will be glad to have a lower, modern tub. also, we had a walk in shower here (in addition to the tub; can you imagine in a working class house ?) and if we did not need closet space, we would have kept the shower. i miss stepping in and out of a walk in shower. Form should follow function. make your life easy.
brokelin | 5 years and 5 months ago
Though someone stuck a photo of a clawfoot tub with this post on the site, I don’t think the post was about a clawfoot tub – the poster mentioned curved glass, which you would not need (or want to use) with a clawfoot tub. (You wouldn’t attach a glass wall to a clawfoot, as they can move on their feet – they aren’t permanently attached to their feet, or the feet to the floor. If you did want to enclose a clawfoot with glass, you’d put the glass outside the tub and make it go to the floor, creating a wet room, where you sometimes find clawfoot tubs, as water would hit the floor between the tub edge and the glass.)
Rather, I think the poster was talking about putting glass partial walls on a tub that is firmly attached to the floor and walls, with no feet, only one with a curved corner – the kind that is usually set against the wall on two sides. People do put partial glass from the tub edge to the ceiling with tubs built into the floor and wall, on two sides wi th the glass panels meeting at the corner at a 45 degree angle – but not on ones with the curved corner, obviously.
So, the merits and demerits of clawfoots, while interesting, belong in a different post.
resident2 | 5 years and 5 months ago
If you are a bath person, there is nothing better than a comfortable cast iron tub. Not only for keeping the water warmer for longer, but also the slope of the bath for comfort.
People that take showers rarely clean the tub out after themselves & so I am of the opinion that showers should be a completely separate fixture. Putting glass doors on a tub creates a cleaning mess as well as too enclosed for those taking a bath.
If you have limited space & not enough room for a tub as well as a separate shower, then go with what is your preference. If you are renovating for re-sale value; if on a budget, do a good quality restoration of what you have.
daveinbedstuy | 5 years and 5 months ago
I hate clawfoot tubs. I hate having to wrangle with a shower curtain to get it to keep the water off the floor and I hate getting in and out of them. I haven’t had one since the early 80s and never will. I do have a tub that has a glass door and panel enclosure and I love that and I have shower stalls that are partially enclosed with a glass panel and love that too. They are both certainly a more contemporary look and design. No one in our household takes baths so that’s a consideration if you do. Or have a baby to bathe.
cate | 5 years and 5 months ago
Claw foot tubs are having a renaissance right now and are highly coveted by many. That said, whether it’s optimal to keep it depends on the size and layout of your bathroom. If the bathroom is very narrow, IMHO the long narrow claw foot tub in the traditional spot (on the side along a long wall near the door and away from the window) works best and makes the room appear relatively larger than it actually is, because the tub doesn’t come all the way down to the ground. You can order a special shower curtain for a claw foot tub, which will fit better than three overlapping straight curtains. But other options exist. For examples, check out this post about vintage-style bathrooms: https://www.brownstoner.com/interiors-renovation/victorian-bathroom-ideas-tile-claw-foot-renovation-plumbing/ Also you might find more modern design ideas in old Insider stories: https://www.brownstoner.com/the-insider/ And FWIW here is a post on the history of the bathroom: https://www.brownstoner.com/architecture/victorian-bathroom-history-plumbing-brooklyn-architecture-interiors/
brokelin | 5 years and 6 months ago
Thanks, Cate!
cate | 5 years and 6 months ago
I found this post from Brokelin in another thread and think it was intended for this one so am reposting it here: The key to designing around this tub, if you decide to keep it, is not to go modern at all. The building I lived in with this tub was built before 1910, and all the bathrooms, which may or may not have been partially renovated sometime around the 40s, all had these tubs. The bathrooms look so great still that most of them have not been renovated since, even though the building is now expensive condos. The modern renovated bathrooms some people put in just don’t look as good, and they all look “dated” weeks after they are finished – you can’t improve on turn-of-century/vintage perfection.
The tubs were paired with an old-fashioned (because they were really old) American Standard toilet with a rectangular tank top with squared edges (someone makes reproduction toilets in this style), and with really old enameled cast iron wall-hung sinks – the kind where the sink backsplash was one with the sink. The old sinks have their charm, but a newer vintage or reproduct ion vintage style pedestal or wall hung sink would look great with the tub, and would have the advantage of ha ving mixed hot and cold water available, which the original sinks in that place did not.
The floor was small white tiles – rectangular, something small, like a half inch by one and half inches, set in pairs, two running this way, then two perpendicular to those two, with dark (or darkened by a century) grout. You could reproduce that vintage look by using very small tiles of any shape, even adding a pattern in with some black or colored tiles as many old tile floor have. The walls were tiled half-way up all around with standard white 4“ square tiles, continuing into the shower at a higher height (I suspect these may have been added in the 40s with the showers but I’m not sure.) I would probably prefer to use subway tiles on the walls instead of square ones if I were designing such a bathroom now, and I would use white grout, not the now-so-popular black or other dark grout on the walls – that just reminds me of not-so-clean actual subway station walls, but subway tiles with white grout does not.
It sounds very white, which it was, but much of its charm was in its simplicity. You can change the color scheme of the room with just the paint color you use on the upper walls and in the rugs and and towels. I even went with white shower curtains to go with the look, rather than a color as I usually choose, as I felt that with two extra long shower curtains, as I needed there, would be too much of any solid color, even a fairly light color like yellow, which was the color of the shower curtain in my previous white-tiled bathroom, and I don’t like prints for shower curtains – too busy for me. I used a print to make a flat valance for the top of the window above the blind, and used some flat panels of the same fabric to make a sink skirt of sorts (attached them with magnets to the underside of the cast iron sink) so I could store some stuff hidden under the sink.
Other than the old small recessed medicine cabinet, and a glass shelf on the wall over the toilet, there was no storage in the room – so I bought a 12” deep, 30-some-inches high white bath cabinet (anything deeper would have been too deep to walk past in that narrow room) to set against the long wall across from the sink and the curved corner of the tub. And I got a 12″ deep white console table with some small drawers to put next to it that fit over the radiator that was across from the toilet at the end of the room under the window, which provided needed counter space, as did the little over-the-toilet-tank table that I got to set there. I might have a custom radiator cabinet made, or replaced the radiator with a modern flatter smaller one, if had bought the place, but there wasn’t anything else I would change, other than perhaps the recessed medicine cabinet for a vintage-looking but less-worn one (as most of the owners who extensively renovated their places, including the owner of my place, found was best to do with these baths – leave them mostly as is.) I think free-standing furniture looks better in a vintage bath than modern-looking built-in cabinets – though if you are ripping things apart in yours, do try to find room for a long, tall cabinet built recessed into a wall somewhere if you can. Good luck!
Guest User | 5 years and 6 months ago
I’m trying to find a way to design around this tub and still make the bathroom look good, but it’s tough. I feel like I need a professional designer
Guest User | 5 years and 6 months ago
You are amazing! Thank you for such a comprehensive answer. The shower head is right now on the long end of the tub in the middle, and I would like to move it to the short end but that will mean the drain is on the other side. Indeed it is a rounded tub and from your post, you have had exactly the same tub! I just thought perhaps re-oriented the bathroom space to make an alcove tub (50 inches), can be a deep soaking tub, would make the space more usable and modern. The tub makes the space look a bit dated.
brokelin | 5 years and 6 months ago
Well, I can’t answer for you, but I can give you a few thoughts, having lived for six years in a place with a tub that sounds a lot like yours – a very long, old, cast-iron tub with a beautiful curved corner. It sounds like you have may have a curved corner tub as well (from the reference for the need for curved glass.)
I loved that tub – and it was in my favorite bathroom ever. First, if you like to take baths, even only occasionally, cast iron is far superior, as it holds the heat of the hot water, making the bath water stay warmer longer. I also loved the look of the curved corner. My tub was in a long, very narrow bathroom (the tub, ancient wall-hung sink and toilet were all along one wall), and the curved tub corner was a nice touch – one less corner to bump a leg on in a narrow space – besides being beautiful.
You don’t need glass – in fact, I preferred not having it. That’s because I don’t like the feeling of being closed in by any glass walls when taking a bath. My tub was set against the wall on two sides, with the kind of L-shaped shower curtain rod de signed for such tubs that attaches to the walls, with a supporting rod attaching it to the ceiling at the curved corner – yours probably has the same sort of curtain rod. (You can also get them new if yours needs to be replaced.) I used two lightweight shower curtains – the type that are polyester or nylon that double as both fabric curtain and liner, so you don’t need both. I hung the curtains so they met along the long side of the tub – that is where I entered the tub to shower, and hung them overlapping each other by having the top ends of both curtains on one ring, so that water didn’t pour out of the shower at the seam. To take a bath, it was easy to throw the lightweight curtains up over the curtain rod so they’d be out of the way.
My showerhead was on the wall at the short end of the tub (from various clues, I believe there was no shower originally, and that the shower was likely added later.) The tub drain was at the other end of the tub, and that was never a problem – the tub drained fine, though I think there was sometimes a inch of so of water in the bottom of the tub while I was showering if I showered for very long. I always thought this was due to the diameter of the original drain pipes in that 100+ year old building, and that was likely the reason – as I have had the same issue in separate showers in buildings with old drainpipes. It never occurred to me that it might be due to the tub. I don’t think it was, as the tub quickly drained completely once the shower was turned off. All tubs have to drain so they have a slant – there is never a tub that has any standing water in the bottom once it drains.
If you don’t take baths ever, you might not want to keep the tub. (But keep in mind that you might want to take baths in the future for some medical reason, like if you hurt your back.). I would not remove such a great tub to put in another tub that I had to shower in – I would only remove it if there was going to be a separate shower without a tub to step over to get into the shower (with or without a separate tub elsewhere in the bathroom.) My next place after that one had an old deep tub – not quite as long as my curved-end tub,, but really nice and deep, and the original separate corner shower next to the tub had been renovated such that the squarish shower had a glass shower door and a half wall of glass over a pony wall between it and the tub. I liked having a separate shower that I didn’t have to step over a tub to get into – but I only liked it because it was light with all the glass – I hate old dark separate showers – and because it wasn’t tiny, but a nice-sized square. I hate the tiny (new or vintage original) separate showers in some bathrooms that you bump in the walls of when washing yourself – I’d rather shower in a tub any day.
I also think that some of the new glassed-in showers I see replacing tubs in narrow old bathrooms – the kind where the shower is installed in the old tub footprint – might be too narrow for me for a shower – in my place with the separate shower, the shower was slightly deeper than the width of tub next to it – I’m not sure I would have found it roomy enough if it was the only the depth of the tub. The original, separate showers in that building were designed to be roomy that way – square, and wider than a tub. I absolutely hate the after photos of renovations when I see a narrow rectangular glass shower that has replaced a beautiful, deep old tub like yours that is visible in the before photos – that new shower will never feel roomy in width, no matter how long it is, and the bathroom has sacrificed having a great old cast iron tub for a shower that is too narrow.
I would never live without a bathtub, even if I use it to bathe in only occasionally. I love a separate shower, but only if I can also have a tub. If there was not room for both, and I had to choose between a walk-in shower with no tub, or having to step over a tub edge to get into a shower, I would still choose to step over the tub to get into the shower so that I could have a tub (but never in a clawfoot tub – I hated showering in the one I had years ago). My view on that might change as I age, when stepping over any tub edge to shower becomes more awkward – walk-in showers are much easier for the unsteady – but I’m not to that age yet.
I think all those modern, foot to foot-and-a-half high or so tubs are worthless – unless you are bathing small children or pets – they aren’t deep enough for a bath for an adult – only the new deep ones that are designed for bathing are deep enough. If you are going to put in one of those useless not-deep tubs, you might as well opt for a walk-in shower instead. If you put in a new, deep tub for bathing, they can be nice – but I still far prefer the vintage cast iron tubs to any of the new fiberglass, acrylic or steel tubs. I think there are a few new cast iron tubs you can buy, though I think the vintage ones are nicer.
If I were in your shoes, I might take out the great tub IF, and only IF, there was room for a decent-sized square glassed walk-in shower AND a deep, decently long tub that I could take a bath in, even if it was shorter than my very long curved-end tub was. An even shorter, but much deeper, separate soaking tub, such as the kind I have bathed in in fancy hotels, such that you are reclining in a more upright position but are submerged up to your neck, would also work for me (though I expect these might be quite expensive to install at home). You mention a potential tub less than 60 inches – I think only a such a deep tub designed as soaking tub would work for an adult at that length, not any regular bathtub, no matter how deep – its just too short unless it is a deep soaking tub.
If there wasn’t room such that I could have separate shower, though, and still have a deep bathing tub, I would not remove the tub in your bathroom – I’d make it work around the tub you have. If your bath is as narrow as mine was (the reason the tub, sink and toilet were all on one wall is that they had to be), then I suspect you may not have the room needed for a roomy-enough separate shower. So, if you don’t want a bathroom completely without a tub, keep the one you have. Though you might have room for both a shower and a new shorter tub if if you put the shower along the shorter end wall of a narrow bathroom. If you can make your old tub work for you though, I’m not sure that removing it would be worth all the effort it would add to reconfiguring a small bathroom. You have a great tub, and if you design your new bath around it, it might make the best bathroom – I’m pretty sure that’s what I’d do with what you’ve described (even though I’ve since experienced how nice it is to have a separate shower that you don’t have to step over a tub to get into for your morning shower) because I still miss the bathroom I had with that tub.
I would design around the tub, taking my design cues from that era – making a vintage looking bath, rather than surrounding it with super-modern square-edged stuff that will make the tub look out of place.
You may prefer to not have a tub at all. Though this is common now, and people will tell you it won’t affect resale, know that there is a subset of buyers who would never consider a place without a tub. Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t do it if that’s what works for you – just don’t believe those who tell you no one will care on resale, as many definitely do.
If the reason you want to remove the tub is to make room for the ubiquitous double sink vanity, ask yourself if you really need two sinks. I prefer one sink, and I hate vanities – give me a pedestal or a wall hung sink, with or without chrome supporting legs, any day.
If I had owned that place with the curved tub, I would have added a grab bar to the wall for safety if one slips, as I did occasionally, when stepping into the long tub to shower (that tub bottom was slippery!) Also, if you do install a new tub, or reconfigure around your existing tub, keep in mind that having a ledge a the end of the tub where your head goes can make for a more comfortable bathing experience than when the tub edge is right up against the wall – that can be hard on the neck when bathing, and kind of wrecks the whole idea of a taking a bath due to the poorly thought-out design.