April 5, 2008- Cast Iron Tub Removal and a whole lot of debris luggingOur basic strategy for the construction phase of this project at its core is simple: We do as much of the "grunt work" as possible so our contractors can focus their time on utilizing the skills of their trade. When we first walked through the building with Jim Dance back in February we asked him if it was "ok" if we did most of the demolition ourselves. Jim didn't have to say much to answer our question. His sheepish grin practically shouted "sounds great to me!" Jim and Larry had to take care of the demolition of the roof and rafters for the middle dormer because it was out of the scope of my limited skill set. They did exactly as we asked and left us a huge mess piled along the Huddle Road side of the middle unit. Laura attacked the bathroom while I got a workout lugging material to the dumpster. 
After lugging the first big pile of material I found that there was a small amount of drywall, lathe and baseboard left to mangle. I grabbed a sledge hammer Jim had left upstairs and got to work. 
We decided to skip lunch because our time on Saturday was limited. The mess was cleaned up in two hours or so. 
I purposely left one last piece of demo as my "dessert" for the day. I figured it would be fun to demolish an old tub. Wendell, Ryan, Dan and I had lugged the cast iron tub from the west wing to Equinox with the thought that we could throw it out the roof while Jim and Larry were framing the dormer. Unfortunately Jim and Larry worked too fast so we missed our chance. I'm not complaining! But how to get rid of that heavy old tub? It was NOT going to be easy to get it down the stairs in one piece. Even a trusty sawz-all was no match for the cast iron. Brute force was my best option. Below is the tub before I got to work. 
I grabbed my mattoch named "Killy" and addressed my lingering anger at not getting tennis lessons when I was a kid ;). 
After making sure my safetly glasses and gloves were in place, I first tried to hit the tub "head on" with the pick side of the mattoch. BAD IDEA!!!! All I produced where a series of sparks that could have burned the house down. I attacked the tub from the side and it crumbled surprisngly easily. 
After I had chipped out most of the sidewalls of the tub it had clearly lost its structural integrity. I thwacked it a few times with Jim's sledgehammer and it broke into pieces small enough for me to lug down the stairs to the dumpter. Though it was no "easy" task, I was surprised how quickly the tub fell apart. 
Not a flashy day of work this week, but we still got lots done. Next week we'll tackle the floor covering in Equinox and start to remove some wallpaper. We're going to try a rented wallpaper steamer to see if that helps us move more quickly. Posted by Jeremy
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