the iron tub in my attic
the big heavy tub
when my wife and i moved into our house we found a large heavy cast iron bathtub in a corner of the attic. at first we were kinda excited about it. it was in a dark corner and we could not really see. we thought that if some one spent the effort to get an incredibly heavy piece of metal up three stories it must have been nice. we thought it was going to be a nice antique tub.
unfortunately by the time we got enough light into the dark corner to see the tub we found out it was not nice. it was a big old nasty tub. the porcelain was worn out in spots with rust showing through. it look liked thousands of baths too many were taken in it.
so we just left the tub in it's dark corner. now that we are moving out we needed to get the tub out of the attic. i figured it would take at least six people to pick it up and move it safely down the stairs. the problem with that idea was that there was no way to fit more than two people and the tub in the narrow winding rear stair well.
the three sets of stairs the bathtub need to get down
our second thought was to use the cutting torch and break up the tub into smaller pieces, but we were kinda shy about this idea because we thought we would burn the house down.
most people said to just leave the tub in the attic. but we felt we couldn't do that to whoever was moving into the house.
asking around we found out you could smash a cast iron tub with a sledge hammer and it would shatter. this sounded like a fantastic idea. the recipe was to cover the tub with a tarp and start hitting it.
so thats what i did.
the tarp protects you from flying shards of metal and porcelain
i had to hit it quite a few times to make the first crack
i hit a few more times, it was very loud
around this time i felt that even thought it was only 18 degrees out, i needed to open the window to get some fresh air, and to let my neighbors know that i was doing some really tough manly stuff.
my son was sleeping in the bedroom below, and he slept though it all. i was surprised
even with the tarp there was shards throughout the whole attic
the iron tub has been destroyed
my wife and i threw the big pieces out the window and then swept up the rest. much easier than using the stairs.
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