Bathroom: Demolition OR Aggression Therapy

Everyone thinks demolition sounds like fun. "Ooh...hitting things with a sledge hammer. Yay!" It is a little bit fun, but more so for the instant gratification. We don't use sledge hammers, though. For lathe and plaster you can do quite well with a regular hammer and a small crow bar. If you do it just right, you can remove nice big sections of plaster and then pop off the lathe. It's a dusty, dirty mess and is most comfortable if you cover nearly every bit of skin, but then you get sweaty and that's also disgusting. We wore respirators, ear plugs and protective glasses, but the glasses get foggy, sweaty, and clouded with dust and are a constant hassle. We did our best to contain the dust in the bathroom by taping up a sheet of plastic. Given the many steps up to our front door and the narrow hallway, we opted to carry the refuse out to the dump truck by the five gallon bucketful. Quite a workout!

We had considered keeping the cast iron tub. Several of the contractors we spoke with thought we should, but in retrospect, we concluded that they just didn't want to deal with its removal. Cast iron is a quality material, but the tub was pitted and not in the very best shape. It just seemed like if we were going to have a new bathroom, we deserved to have an ALL new bathroom.

Dilemma: how to remove the tub? Our neighbor said that he and a buddy carried his cast iron tub out in one whole piece. "No problem for two guys," he said. He even offered to help. I had read a blogger's account of torch-cutting their tub into two pieces in order to remove it. She said it took 3 hours to cut! Ugh! I then turned to YouTube where I learned that you can whack a cast iron tub repeatedly with a sledge hammer (there you go!) until it forms a weak spot and begins to shatter into pieces. We borrowed our neighbor's maul axe and I was the first to have a go at it. Nick didn't seem optimistic and left me to wear myself out with this foolish attempt. After maybe five minutes of whacking, I broke through with a nice hole in the side. Nick seemed impressed. I couldn't get the break to expand over the top, so he took over and completed the task. Let me tell you, even broken in two, this tub was HEAVY! We are grateful that it doesn't cost anything to dump metal at the transfer station, because they charge by the pound.

It was no easy feat to get the old floor up, but with a masonry chisel and a lot of determination, we did it. We stood in the empty room and I commented that I already liked it better than before. "I can't imagine standing right here and actually enjoying being in this room."