LESLIE: Bernard, welcome to The Money Pit. What are you working on?
BERNARD: I’m thinking of redoing my bathroom. Now, the things that I don’t understand – in other words, the bath makeover. In other words, instead of taking out the bathtub, they have this system of covering the bathtub. It’s called a bathover. I want to know what you think about that.
TOM: Well, it’s an insert and basically it’s made to fit inside and cover the tub that way and sometimes it goes up and around the walls.
BERNARD: Right, got you.
TOM: You know, I think it’s an option. It’s usually pretty expensive. I found, when I priced out these bath inserts, that they cost almost but not quite as much as the cost of replacing the walls and the tub yourself.
LESLIE: Yeah, but you know what? There’s the tradeoff, because if you do a traditional bathroom remodel you’re looking at weeks, you know, to do the entire project. With these bath refitting, sort of covering products, it’s done in a day.
BERNARD: Right, I understand that. (inaudible at 0:20:48.2)
TOM: The other thing is, Bernie, that what you’re going to find is that it does take up some room in the bathtub. So the bathtub will end up being a little bit narrower and a little bit shorter by virtue of the fact that the insert is there.
BERNARD: Oh, that’s very interesting. I didn’t know that. (inaudible at 0:21:02.7)
TOM: Yeah, because it’s pretty thick.
BERNARD: The only thing that I had – was thinking about, if I had any problems in the wall; in other words, I have to break into the whole system.
TOM: Yeah, that’s a good point. Well, that’s a good question. I don’t know if that system is designed for that. Let’s say you had to get behind the wall to replace the plumbing valves or something.
BERNARD: Right, right. That’s what I was thinking about.
TOM: If you can’t access it from the backside, then you know, that’s right; there could be an issue there.
BERNARD: Right. So I’ll go through the old, traditional way of just retiling with tiles itself.
TOM: Yeah, I think that that’s a better option.
BERNARD: Replacing the bathtub.
TOM: Yep.
LESLIE: And you know what? It looks way better. Even though those products do look nice when you see them on TV and magazines and stuff, it’s always so much nicer to do the work the real way and plus, on a resale front, it’s going to be way more profitable for you.
TOM: Bernie, thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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