After our very successful first day of demo, we started on day two. Neither one of us was really sure how to go about getting this enormous bathtub out of the bathroom. With the step and surrounding walls gone, Jake took a look the underneath. The first thing he did was locate the Jacuzzi pump and disconnect it from the surrounding pipes.
The empty space between the two white pipes is where the pump was located.
From there, we knew we had to get the tub out, but we were worried about damaging the drain and lifting it out, so back to Google we went. First Jake had to hydrate, though!
Jake found a video that explained removing tubs, and when the people in the video threw their bathtub into a dumpster, it shattered into pieces. Jake asked why not just use a sledgehammer and break it into pieces while still in the bathroom, and just carry it out in pieces? We decided as long as we were careful, it couldn't hurt. We weren't going to save the tub, anyway.
We went back to the bathroom and I asked Jake to give me his best lumberjack pose. In hindsight it's funny to think that at this time I thought bathtub sledgehammer-ing=chopping wood, but I figure swinging a sledgehammer and swinging an ax, close enough. Haha.
And with that, he took the first swing!
I was pretty fascinated watching him work. On one hand I felt pretty silly standing there snapping pictures, but I was so enthralled by it all I couldn't help myself. The tub keep falling apart piece by piece. And while Jake made it look easy, this tub was solid concrete with some kind of coating. I even asked if I could try, and it was way harder than it looked. I was pretty proud of myself for knocking off two small pieces with a lot of effort, while not damaging the walls. He did the entire tub.
When it got loose enough to wiggle around, he pulled it out from the wall while I held the pipes to make sure they wouldn't get damaged.
Picture from inside the linen closet, where I was holding the pipe.
Jake continued breaking it up piece by piece, and I carried out the bigger pieces one by one. For the smaller pieces, I found boxes around the house and filled them with the smaller tub remnants and carried those out. When we all of the tub walls were removed, leaving the bottom of the tub, we swept it out and carried that out together. It was strangely liberating to see that tub we hated go out piece by piece.
Once again, we found more surprises. I freaked out at first because I saw some kind of centipede/bug/thing. I asked Jake if it was real and he said no, it was rubber. He went through the rubble on the ground and found several more. The only thing we could think of was either a) they were kids bath time toys that somehow (??) fell through, or b) the person who installed it thought it would be a funny joke. I have no idea. All I know is that I was pretty thoroughly grossed out, even if they were fake.
After all the pieces were cleared out, we swept it all up.
Two days in, the demo is done! Now on to repairing and rebuilding. Pretty far off from where we started yesterday, right?
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