Saturday, May 07, 2005

Vanity, crap and possession

I have believed for a while that our bathtub has something seriously wrong from a psychic sense. It has caused me no end of misery in restoring it. I have spent countless hours cramped in uncomfortable positions trying to make its ugly cracked dingy surface into something--well--that anyone would want to bath in. Along the way even that ambition got compromised. Maybe if I could just make it so someone...anybody, please, want to use my tub???

No, it just continued to be a time sink, ending up in a stasis of varying levels of, well, revoltingness. Last weekend, I spent hours sanding the tub down to a reasonable smoothness--with my husband, Rick, shaking his head in puzzled amusement when I told him it was cursed, that it was inhabited by a demon, that it needed excorcism.

Tonight, I don't think Rick disagrees with my assessment, although I feel that its liberation from the trailer may have been spiritually cleansing, hopefully divorcing it from the miscellaneous poltergeists it has obviously aquired in its life.

Goal today--clear out the bathroom. We started with removing the top of the vanity (some mildly tricky screws) then moved on to removing the toilet.


Toilet removal

That was fairly easy. Next came the vanity body. It also removed after a bit of convincing (some more odd screws)--and guess what--we found hantapoopies left behind (YUCK).

Then came the tub. First we removed all the rivets and removed the P trap.


Access to the P trap under the bathtub
No movement.

Then we took out most of the gaucho frame to see if there were screws holding in the tub.

No dice.

Then we removed the sliding door and the door trim (requiring cutting out lots of eensy teensy finish nails). This revealed still more screws that were removed.

No movement.


Working the tub free

Finally, Rick released the partition. This revealed that all screws had been removed. Only one thing was possible.

The tub was glued to the floor. Glued well, good and solidly (just like an Airstream)! Dagnabit all, Wally, why did they do this?

Rick spent another four hours sawing under the tub. Finally after a whole day effort on the bath, the tub released at 7:45 pm.


The face of victory!

Underneath, we found two things: a very old fire extinguisher and a candle with a teeny little note exhorting Jesus and God to stop Karen from doing drugs. Now, we don't know who Karen was or is, but obviously, this tub has been beset with some powerfully bad ju-ju.


Finally, the tub is out--some glued bits are still visible

We felt that while we may have not released Karen, we did release the tub. I went off for beer, salsa, shrimp and steak (most for Rick, since he did the heavy work).

Who ever that said bathtubs can't be possessed? I just hope this is over with it, finally...


New interior view...Darn, I have a lot to clean, but that will wait until tommorrow...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

With all my aches and pains restoring my Airstream, I UNDERSTAND how Karen got into drugs...I just ripped my fingernail off to the half moon, I ache from head to toe, I'm going to bed...arghhhh

Bebe