I recently replaced a 23 year-old tub, in a bathroom that was perfectly sized for the original tub; I had no spare inches to work with, along either horizontal dimension. This meant that I had to find a tub with the exact same footprint dimensions.
I did find one, and the spouse is happy with it functionally. But now begins the problem of making it actually look good. The problem I have is that tub manufacturing has changed somewhat in the near quarter-century that has transpired.
The old tub was made entirely of cultured marble, and had its own integrated 60x42 top deck with helpful straight edges and right-angle corners. It was a "drop in" tub, in the sense that the home-builder built up a stud frame to support it from underneath. But it didn't actually drop in to a finished, pretty deck that was longer or wider than itself, because it was its own deck. So the way the home-builder finished the install was to caulk-in a rectangular sheet of quarter-inch cultured marble to hide the supporting studs. This single large sheet was considered the service panel. So if you ever needed to access the plumbing (upgrade fixture, etc.) you'd just cut the caulk, and wiggle the sheet of cultured marble out of the way.
The new tub (shown below) is also 60x42, but is constructed very differently. It is acrylic, which I gather was molded in some giant vacuum form/press. Instead of having a solid & uniform 3/4 inch deck that terminates at square & straight edges, it has "flanged" edges that bend down at an angle that is only mostly vertical, and only approximates "straight". Also the corners eventually turn a full 90 degrees, but they take their sweet time getting there. And the flanged edge tends to hang a little lower at those corners than it does during the approximately-straight runs (60 inches, and 42 inches).
This is all because the manufactures of these acrylic drop-in tubs seem to all assume that someone will buy their drop-in tub and drop it in to some finished deck that is at least a few inches wider & longer than the tub itself. But as I noted at the start of this DIY question, I don't have that luxury. I had no spare inches in which to build out a deck surface, and need to rely on the tub's own deck as being the totality of all deckage... just like the OG tub.
So with all of that explained, here is the question itself: I need to come up with a front service panel for this new tub, very much like what the old tub had. It would ideally be:
- one piece
- not super heavy
- about a quarter-inch thick
- needs to take paint well (ideally with little to no texture)
... and it will need to be a material than I can work the top edge of (filing, sanding, etc.), so that I can contour it to mate well with the approximately straight edges and radius'd square corners.
What modern material would be good for this application, in a necessarily wet environment?
My plan is to rely on both rare-earth magnets and caulk to hold it in place.
