The new bath only went in once the tiles along the old one had come off.
This is it in place, still in its film, with no panel on the front yet, so you can see the feet it stands on and the pipework underneath. Higher up is the patterned border on the wall tiles, and the brown strips in the joint between the bath and the tiles are cardboard.
The tiles and the bath
On most baths the bottom row of tiles comes down onto the bath’s edge, with a sealed joint between the two, so those tiles are sitting on the bath as much as on the wall. Take the old bath out and that row is disturbed however careful anyone is, because the bath has to come out from under it. Then the new bath is hardly ever the old one’s twin. A different length, a different height at the rim, a different shape of edge, and the line the old tiles were cut to is the wrong line for the new bath, too high in one place and short in another. So the straight answer to whether a bath can be changed without touching the tiles is sometimes, on a bath that comes out cleanly and a new one of the same size, and not on a job like this one, where getting the new bath in meant replacing the tiles along it. That makes it a plumbing job and a tiling job at once. The old bath is disconnected and comes out, the new one is set level on its feet, the waste and the taps are connected, and then the tiles go back down to its edge, the joint is sealed, and the panel goes on last.
Plumbing and tiling
Those are the two trades on this one.
When they are two firms, a new bath can sit in a room with no tiles round it until the second firm can come, and nobody can use it in the meantime. We tile, as the bathroom page says, and a bath like this is what that means on an ordinary job.
The tap end
The second photograph, below, is the other end of the same bath. Two cross head pillar taps, the plug and the overflow, and cardboard still sitting in the joint where the tiles meet the bath. The waste underneath is the pipework side of the job, and the panel stays off until everything under there has been run and checked.
Ring 07546 185778 and say what is coming out and what is going in. A bath, a bath swapped for a shower, or the whole room, it is the same number.
