As I had mentioned before my bathtub looked entirely out of scale in my bathroom. I just couldn't deal with it. If I had left it, I would have already been re-doing it by now. So, I did it right the first time.
The Inspiration
- Not leaving a tiny bathtub, out of laziness, to drive me nuts by the time I finished the room
Supplies
- 1/16th craft wood
- Scrap balsa wood
- Craft knife
- T-Square
- Cardstock
- Quick Grip glue
- Match sticks (for corner braces)
- A good small ruler
You might be saying, it looks ok to me. I wasn't asking for your opinion. Ha.
I painted the faucets out grey. No brass here, thank you.
I dry fitted all my wood as I went. The bottom surround is 3 pieces, 2 sides and a front. Measure to fit your tub. Ensure the sides come up just over the top of the tub as you need to secure the top pieces of wood to the sides.
BUT if I had to redo this, I would have put the entire thing on a 1/16th wood base and glued the tub to it from the start. Soooooo much easier then ensuring the tub is in the same place every time as you measure. Not to mention it just being easier to glue together.
I would have also backed all my wood pieces with cardstock to make them stronger without adding thickness to the structure.
The front 2 corners were glued to the sides, but I used 3 matchsticks in each corner as supports for the joints
I did all the gluing on my work bench and used my battery storage boxes as braces.
As you can see, there are the matchstick corner braces.
At the back of the tub I used a pieces of balsa to brace the far side of the tub and support the side walls along with adding another contact glue point to the wall.
This is a slightly more clear view of the surround sans tub. That extra piece of balsa is needed for stability.
At this point I then gave it 2 coats of DecoArt "Antique White." I also applied a piece of cardstock around the bottom edge of the tub. I added the piece along the top edge AFTER I glued the top down to ensure the seam was concealed.
I made a template of the top of the surround using white cardstock. I was able to cut the cardstock and fine tune the opening before I moved on to cutting it from 1/16th craft wood,
Cutting it was tough. It cracked in a few places where the areas were very narrow, like near the taps. I then glued the wood to the cardstock and solved the strength issue.
I glued it down with Quick Grip and used my battery boxes and "D" size batteries as weights along the top.
I then finished off with my cardstock strip, another coat of paint and 2 coats of Mod Podge in Gloss.
I very happy with it and it is very sturdy. Kitty jams those little people in that tub and nothing has happened to it so far.
