Weekend Project: Bathtub Moving

Sorry I haven't been updating lately--I'll try to post something more substantive soon. In the meanwhile, here's this past weekend's project--moving the clawfoot bathtub that Jen stripped and refinished into the renovated master bathroom, over at Bird & Jen's.

First, Bird and I ran a bit of baseboard, where it goes behind the tub.

The tub moving process involved a low dolly and leapfrogging pieces of plywood across the floor, to avoid leaving dents in the wood floors. It worked remarkably well, although the whole "move-then-leapfrog" thing made me think of stories of ancient builders doing the same with rollers, sledges, and stonehenge-size blocks.

I've been looking for this quote from a steam-era (?) engineer, along the lines of, "Heavy lifting is for levers, mules, and idiots." Unfortunately, Google hasn't turned it up yet. I'm glad that we made use of basic machines where possible for this project... although there are times when you just have to muscle the thing on and off the cart.


Well yeah, lady, there's ya problem.

Anyway, as a public service to the IntarWeb, in case anyone finds this useful, a bit of cleverness was required to attach the feet to the tub. They were laquer-finished ball feet:


The connection fitting was some type of a wedged dovetail--it wedged into place, but didn't seem completely secure. However, when you dry-fit the piece, you can see that there was a rectangular opening on the inboard/far side of the lug. Apparently, the foot is meant to be secured by some type of a metal wedge inserted in that opening. Huh... didn't see any of those in the kit.


However, an old-fashioned metal "cut nail" seemed to work just fine in this application. A bit of tapping and nudging secured everything together.

Alternately, some searching on the net turned up this solution--a threaded rod and turnbuckle, to secure the feet from slipping outwards.


Anyway, seems like their bathroom project will still be ongoing for a bit.... but this moves one heavy piece into place.

Afterwards, Jen made a lovely dinner (pork chops and risotto with asparagus and fiddleheads).


A late evening of drinking followed (beer, gin & tonic, red wine with dinner, Glenrothes single malt).