I haven't pulled back the caulk. Getting in the space won't be difficult. On the outside edge of the tub, the deck space is slightly over four inches. On the faucet edge, there is no decking; the tub butts up against the wall. On the back end of the tub, there is about eight inches. On the final long side, there is a "garden" type window centered with the tub, which is 25 inches deep and 48 inches long. Basically, it is an extension of the deck. I will try to post a picture once I figure out how to do it!

So we are remodeling our master bathroom and I've chosen an undermount tub with a stone tub deck. A few days ago while installing the tub deck, the countertop installers damaged the tub -- there's about a 1.5" long x 1/4" deep gouge in it. They owned up to it right away and seemed so upset about it that I felt sorry for them. I did call the tub manufacturer and they gave me the name of the acrylic repair person that handles their warranty work in my area. I texted him a (kind of bad - it's hard to photograph) picture and he seems to think he can repair it so it won't be noticeable to anyone who didn't already know where it was. He did say that if I knew and was looking, I might be able to tell -- that basically it is hard to match the top finish absolutely perfectly. He has no available appointments til June 20 so I won't know how the fix looks until then. To their credit, the countertop company did not make me pay the balance on my installation (a pretty significant amount) which would normally have been due with the installation-- they said they wanted to deal with the tub first and they wanted to do "whatever it took" to fix it. So does anyone have experience with repairing an acrylic tub? Could you see the area afterwards? I posted this on the home dec forum when it first happened and several people said their repairs were perfect, but after speaking with the tub guy and having him say "well you might be able to tell" I'm a little nervous. Maybe he's just covering his bases by not overpromising -- he is the warranty fixer guy for all the major tub manufacturers in the area so he must be one of the best. Also, I'm not sure what to ask for from the countertop company -- at the very least, I'm assuming they'll cover the cost of the repair guy....and at most, I suppose I could insist on a brand new tub but that seems kind of crazy and would set my project back by another month-6 weeks while the tub is reordered then I have to round up the carpenter, plumber, etc......not to mention a whole new tub deck. On the other hand, this is a brand new >$2000 tub that has yet to see its first bath -- the plumbing isn't even hooked up....sniff! And if I opt to go the repair route, should I ask for anything else besides the cost of the repair --things like time off work to be home for the tub repair guy? Or if I am left being able to see the repair, should I ask for a discount on the balance of the countertop to make up for that? I have no idea what the standard is -- has anyone ever encountered a situation like this? Thanks!

I’m not sure where your leak is coming from, I just wanted to tell our experience so you can gauge whether it might be a possibility in your case. One of our guest bathrooms had a leak that we originally assumed was from the shower. We hadn’t lived in the house for very long, and we hadn’t even used that shower yet when my sister came to visit. She stepped out of the shower and realized that water was squeezing up between the tiles when she stepped on them. Naturally, she informed us. My hubby had the entire bathroom completely gutted in half an hour! (It was a small bathroom with a Fiberglass shower, the tiles popped up like toast out of a toaster, and he’s just a beast... lol!) we see evidence of long term damage and provide my sister with another bathroom to use for the remainder of the visit. We didn’t start the bathroom remodel immediately, and when we did start it was slow going. We were very fortunate because we had barely started the remodel when we got another weather front move in with a whole lot of moisture... (It has been snowing a lot during her visit) and that’s when we realized the bathroom was leaking from another source! Hubby again ripped up the bathroom, and this time ripped out part of the wall that is on the exterior and that’s when we realized the leak was coming from outside. It took us a bit to figure out but we finally determined (with outside help) that it was because that wall was directly against an exterior chimney that had not been flashed properly. We left that bathroom unfinished for quite a while while we fixed the chimney problem, and waited for some more really good rain storms to make sure it was indeed dry before we finished our bathroom remodel. We were just fortunate that we have a lot of other bathrooms and this was just a guest bathroom. Anyways, I hope your issue isn’t something like that!

Here are a some pics and my dilemma. Keep in mind this is my old fridge...new one comes today! Here is how we ended up with this: I have never had an enclosed fridge so didn't think about the peninsula dying into panels or how deep panels were going to be. I "semi" designed the new footprint and took it to Lowe's where the KD took over. (yes---I know......) Bought Schuler plywood with maple fronts cabinets. Although the kitchen designer had the model number of the fridge we were buying, which is a full-size, she designed the kitchen with 24" deep panels. She knew I was trying to have the look of an enclosed fridge. Being that I've never had an enclosed fridge, it was something I just didn't think of until the install started. Evidently she put a counter-depth in the design program because the elevation sketches she gave me showed an enclosed fridge. "Luckily" the panels actually came in wrong and were cut at only 23" for some strange reason and the installer caught it right away when looking over everything. Otherwise he probably would have installed them and I would be stuck. So called Lowe's to reorder the panels and somehow in all this it suddenly dawned on me that a full size fridge was going to be deeper and require deeper panels. I thought "no problem! Yay I can order them at 30!" By this time the KD had quit her job due to the pandemic. The other KD didn't know what was going on so we called in the Schuler rep. She was the one who immediately told me that those 30" panels would be sticking out in front of the peninsula. She asked if we could move the peninsula forward since the other side is an overhang for seating, but we couldn't since it would bottleneck the entrance into the kitchen down to under 36" and getting rid of an existing bottleneck was one of the reasons for the re-design to start with. So we had a dilemma. We cannot go down to a counter depth fridge which was the other option. What I decided was to split the difference and order 27" refrigerator panels. The fridge without doors is 29.5" so I will have about 3" of the side of the fridge sticking out which I don't like, but while I want my kitchen to look beautiful, I value the functionality too. The old fridge that you see in the pic sticks out a total of 32" The new fridge will stick out 34 with doors but without handles (4.5" of that is doors that would stick out anyway) Here's the really complicated part....we will be installing decorative panels on the end of the fridge as we have them on all the cabinets. This is how you enter the kitchen and I don't want that big blank space there next to the peninsula. The panels should be installed with just 1/4" reveal. I posted a photo below of how the panels look that are already installed on the side of the pantry that adjoins to a 17" high window seat. Luckily those face the opposite way from the fridge panels so you will never see both at the same time. I also posted photos of us holding up panels on the side of the fridge (they are NOT the right size panels...we have to order those still---we just used these to look at the right edge as to how wide to make the panels.) Also keep in mind we can remove the quartz backsplash piece if that would look better. That was not originally planned...the panels were going to sit directly on top of the countertop. So do we order the panels with just the 1/4" reveal to match the panels in the rest of the kitchen? Or, as the Schuler rep recommended, order the panels so they are the same width with the countertop, leaving about 1 3/4" reveal on the right side, but then your eye follows the countertop all the way up. I asked the countertop templater guy if I should just lengthen the overhang on the kitchen side of the peninsula to 2.5" to bring it out to within 1/4" of the fridge panel but he said no....I'm now thinking I should have insisted on it. Especially since we have full overlay cabinets that already make the overlay look very small since the 1.5" planned overhang is measured from the box, not the front of the drawers. Note how small the overhang looks to the drawers. And then of course, they had templated for a 1.5" overhang and I only got 1.25" UGH! Every quarter inch there would have made the reveal on the side of the fridge less. Suggestions appreciated! I'm hoping that I will eventually make peace in my mind with this issue and won't notice it but it is driving me crazy right now. I think of all the things that screwed up just because of this one error by the KD that I didn't catch and I am beating myself up for it!