Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms - removing fiberglass shower/tub

I am remodeling the bathroom and am considering removing the fiberglass one piece shower /tub and replacing with a shower unit. I am anticipating getting out mans favorite tool....sawzall and cutting it in pieces. What can I anticipate in my destruction derby? destroyed drywall, framing, etc? Maybe I would be smarter to just let it be? Thanks for any input....Willie

My down south neighbor has his re-finished, and it looked like new. about 5 yrs old on the re-work, and still looked great.

Welcome to the forums! If you are determined to remove the tub unit, make sure the shower unit you want will fit through the door openings leading to the bathroom. They look great in the store, but quite often the houses are built around them.
If you wan to remove the tub, you will want to cut it into three pieces and remove the middle piece first then the back piece, then the front piece after disconnecting the water supply units. Be aware, if you are using your recip saw, when you get to the bottom, you will probably (hopefully) hit concrete type materials. This was put there to give the bottom added support. It will destroy your blades, so have a few on hand. You can remove it without destroying the studs and floor joists, just don't use 12" blades. All you will need will be a 6" blade, and the least aggressive the better.

thanks Larry, the 3 piece idea is good and being over 50 I think I have learned to tone down the aggression with tools (maybe :). I didn't think of the concrete underneath that probably is there. That will be a mess to clean up. I am trying to evalute this part of project to see if it is really worth it. The floor and new sinks are the "easy" part.

OH, I wasn't speaking of "your" aggression, I was speaking of the recip blade aggressiveness. Not a metal blade, but not a cross cut blade, if you know what I mean. The concrete under the tub (if any) will probably be firmly adhered to the tub, rather than the floor, so your worst thing will be picking the heavy stuff up and hauling it out. I have had to make my 3 vertical cuts, then cut around the base, making 4 pieces out of it, just because of the concrete. Good luck with it.

Well I just saved about 2 K with something I found at Lowes. It is a curved rod to hold the shower curtain out away and expand the shower area of a tub/shower fiberglass unit. I was thinking of tearing it out and building a shower, but it works great now with more room, so I can go on to replacing the floor and installing a double sink. Now if I could only talk my wife out of the need for a double sink, heck I would use the pond out back and she can have the existing sink!

Willie,
I hear yah about the whole double sink debate.

My wife and I have one in our current home and the last house we lived in.

But we hardly ever (I mean ever) share the bathroom.
Its been just a few rare occassions when hard pressed for time.
Even so, another bath is just down the hall (or the pond out back).

Good Luck.

-jasper