Well, phooey. I taped it out in the bathroom with blue tape last night and it looked like it would fit, but with too many nos, I'm back to the drawing board. Interesting thought, Vix. Right now we don't actually have a toilet room, so much as a separate toilet "area" (there's no door, and the closet takes up too much room to add a door), but it's on my agenda to create one. In our house, it's very necessary. I generally use that bathroom to try to FIND privacy, only to have 3 people (and sometimes the dog) follow me into the bathroom. I'm looking forward to having a door that locks and a fan so that I don't have two little people handing me the TP and asking whether I'm doing number 1 or 2 (oh, and the 1 year old likes to flush while I'm ON the pot; so I've got my own special cold water washlet), while DH decides that he absolutely has to shave and brush his teeth at that exact moment. Now if I take a hike to the guest bath on the other side of the house, all three just follow me AGAIN. Sometimes when I have insisted on locking the door in the guest bath (no way to do that with our LOUVERED -- why??? -- pocket door in the master), my one year old plopped down prostrate outside the door and cried until I open the door. For my W/C, I want to put in a LOUD fan; no whisper quiet for me. Maybe I'll even add a radio. :) The way I'm seeing it, I can either get rid of the long vanity altogether and live with a fairly small vanity, plus a tub and shower, I can skip the tub and live with the kids' bathroom on the third level as the only room with a tub, or we can bump out that weird corner jog, which would give us an additional 49'' X 27'' space -- enough to fit a 5X3 tub, 5X3 shower and keep the two vanities. But that sounds very expensive and will require carefully removing and replacing the siding to match the existing. DH's response to all this was "why do we need a tub?"

Hm, I had been wondering if you'd taken the past surround *down* or just put the new surround over it. If you've *taken it down* and you didn't see any rot behind the sheetrock when you removed it, then I'd venture to say that you're safe. There was *no* black or otherwise unpleasant anything where the low point was? Checking downstairs will eliminate the other one possibility, which would be that the rot went straight down and didn't communicate upwards at all into anything you removed. Which would be odd, but I guess possible. Maybe you just had *really good* sealing. We don't.

I suggest bromine for a hot tub. Go to your pool supply and purchase a Spa Vac, it's a round device with a bag that'll hook up to your garden hose and vacuum the debris out. Golf is correct, never go heavy on your chems, put them in the water in small quantities. It's much much easier to take care of a 20000 gallon pool than a 500 gallon hot tub. Have fun, hot tubs are AWESOME once you've got the grip on maintaining a warm body of water. I've really missed the one at my last home since I moved to our new place a few years ago. I love my new pool/spa/waterfall combo but nothing beats the instant satisfaction of hopping straight into the hot tub, the comfortability of the seating, and the number of jets in an acrylic hot tub. See ya, Kelly

Hello everyone, been a while since I posted but I just bought a 1998 28x52 Skyline Brookstone on an acre with masonry skirting. It is a nice looking home with great curb appeal. I intend to rent it out after paint, new laminate flooring and a new packaged heat pump system. The thing that worries me is the bath tubs, there is no overflow drain on the regular tub or the whirlpool corner tub in the master bath. There is evidence that the regular tub has been allowed to overflow in the past. Has anyone retrofitted an overflow drain to these tubs? The garden tub had been painted white except for the tub interior which was yellow. I thought the yellow was the original color until I tried to remove the paint with Citristrip. Turns out it was originally white and the stripper made a mess of the plastic tub. I'm picking up a new white fiberglass corner tub tomorrow and I intend to install the pump and jets from the old tub in the new tub. It would be a great time to install an overflow if such a thing were available. Since the new garden tub has a center drain it would have to be plumbed in separately from the bottom drain. Thanks