I Suck At Working On The House

tonight, karen wanted to work on the house and demolish more of our bathroom. too bad i suck at working on the house. on the agenda tonight: the 1970s psychedelic green bath tub.

besides the the equally ugly 1970s light fixture that is providing light to the room and the many half-demolished glazed tiled wallboards, the bath tub is the only large remnant left to demolish in the first floor bathroom. the only problem of course: the copper piping that supplies water to the tub and the tub drain.

the copper pipes for the bath tub run through the floor. now obviously, before i cut these pipes in half, i had to make sure there was no water flowing to the bath tub. unfortunately, that meant a friendly visit down to the crawlspace to check the plumbing lines.

in general, karen thinks i'm crazy. in fact, karen thinks i'm looney enough to make her create her own blog and title it "living with mike". (for anyone curious, karen does not have a blog yet... because she does not know how to set up a blog... but she has threatened to have a blog about "living with mike".) that said, tonight is one of those nights where my craziness paid off.

a long time ago, when we first got our house, i decided to work on the house's plumbing system. now, i suck at plumbing too. i've never been a big fan of plumbing because plumbing is simply... dirty. and for those who know me, they know that i am not a big fan of getting dirty. (there's a snicker somewhere in there.)

nonetheless, when we first got our house, the house only had one shut off valve for the water... and that was the main shut off valve. thus, in order to work on any plumbing projects, the water for the entire house had to be shut off. needless to say, that did not sit well with me because i knew we would be working on our house quite frequently.

so in my crazed state, i went into our crawlspace and started soldering new copper pipes with shut off valves to every part of the house that required hot and cold water. sure, the plumbing project took a while... but it was worth it.

in fact, it was particularly worth it today because i realized that i could simply cut the copper pipes to the bath tub without having to worry about the water supply. (for anyone curious, the water supply to the old toilet and sink has also been shut off as well... and yet, the rest of the house still has water! yay!)

anyway, i did a little happy dance (or shuffle) when i emerged from our crawlspace because it was so easy to shut off water to only those parts of the house, without affecting the rest of the house. so from there, we began cutting the copper pipes in half.

the 1970s psychedelic green bath tub actually took some time to remove. the hardest part was figuring out how the drain was attached to the floor. every book i read said that i could simply twist the tub strainer off. little did the books know... this 1970s psychedelic green tub was way before tub strainers had that cross pattern inside. so, i did what any normal person would do... i took a hammer to it.

i probably should clarify: i took a hammer and screwdriver to it... chiseling around the entire circumference of the tub strainer. i must say... a hammer is a great way to relieve stress. after creating a hole around the tub strainer, the entire 1970s psychedelic green bath tub easily came out.

with the bath tub removed, the first floor bathroom project is moving along. fantastic.