TheBanyanTree: Bathroom Trouble

[Rob McMonigal]

So we have a tiled bathroom, with a tiled bathtub.  Well, recently, some of
the tiles gave way, and I was planning to buy some gaudy colored ones to
replace them because, well, that's just what I do.

Except that when I poked around a bit with it today, to see how many new
tiles I'd need, a fair amount of them popped off.

"Uh, oh," I thought, "that's not a good sign.

Next thing I know, I'm poking through a thin layer of linoleum (what the
hell, people who built the house?), which in turn led to crumbling cement(!)
that's so old it has HORSE HAIR in it (!!) and run smack dab into hardwood
boards, that, while damp, are thankfully still okay, because at the rate I
was going, it looked like I was going to end up in my neighbor's house.

So.  Yeah.  Not quite what I was planning.

But here's the question--should I even begin to try patching this up the way
I found it, once the boards dry?  I mean really--cement on top of linoleum?
This strikes me as something that's only going to lead to insurance
claim-level disaster at some point.

Should we just suck it up and pay for a dude to come in and give us a new
bathtub?  That's probably about a grand or so, but if it saves several
thousand later...?  I'm looking for some advice here because, well, the man
I'd like to ask is a colossal asshole who I may in fact never speak to
again.

In other words...HELP!

-- 
-Rob
trebro at gmail.com
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