This is the first weekend in a while that I don’t have any cottage work to do. Everything is all set for the rental season so my focus turns back to work in the main house. I resume work in the bathroom. I’ve already made some progress in the bathroom with stripping old paint from the walls and molding, but it’s done in patches and is blocked by the fixtures in the room. To do a real renovation of the bathroom all of the fixtures need to come out. In the bathroom there’s a new Kohler toilet, a small wall-mounted sink which I’m guessing is older, but not antique, and a claw-footed tub which I think is original to the house.

I start with the tub which has 2 water pipes attached to it along with the drain pipe. The 2 water pipes come off easily, but the drain is tricker. I get the connections loose, but when I try to move the tub, the drain pipe from the tub to the floor is packed in very tight that it appears to be moving the entire pipe. I get nervous that lifting the tub out will somehow rip out the pipes feeding up from under the crawlspace, so I put that on the back-burner and look at the sink.

The sink comes off easily since it only has the 2 supply lines and the S trap drain. None of the connections are rusted or frozen and once they are off, the sink just slides off the mount. I’ve seen other sinks screwed into the wall, but this one just hangs on a mounting bracket. After I get the sink out, I also rip out the medicine cabinet which is recessed and held into place by 4 nails. There’s 2 sconces near the medicine cabinet but I leave those be for now.

Next up is removing the toilet. I shut off the water supply and drain the water from the tank, but when I go to the floor bolts the entire bolt is turning so the nuts are not going anywhere. I try to secure the bolt with a wrench and then turn the nut, but there’s not enough room to hold the bolt to keep it from moving. I read that in many cases the bolts need to be cut due to rust or other issues so I go with the hacksaw on these 2 bolts. That does the trick and then I’m able to get the toilet off.

Back to the tub, I secure a monkey wrench on a part of the pipe that is coming through the floor and am able to hold the pipe down while I lift the tub up. Luckily the tub’s drain pipe pops out and I don’t rip the pipes out from under the house. One of the legs falls off the tub as I’m moving it, but I’m able to nudge it out into the living room.