Over the next week, Lena tried everything. A sledgehammer only chipped the enamel. A heat gun turned the epoxy into a kind of superglue-scented napalm. A contractor named Jerry came by, took one look, laughed for thirty seconds straight, and quoted her nine thousand dollars to “cut out the floor, lift the tub with a chain hoist, and rebuild the joists from scratch.” Lena didn’t have nine thousand dollars. She had a bathtub that was now load-bearing.
She braced her feet against the wall, gripped the tub’s rim, and heaved. bathtub stuck
A crack spiderwebbed across the bathroom tiles. Then another. The entire floor—a six-foot-by-eight-foot chunk of plywood, linoleum, and rot—began to tilt like a seesaw. Lena yelped and scrambled backward into the hallway. The tub, still stubbornly attached, rose two inches, three, then settled at a drunken angle, one claw still gripping the concrete like a stubborn cat on a screen door. Over the next week, Lena tried everything
She was now the owner of a bathtub that had become a permanent architectural feature of her home’s upper level. A contractor named Jerry came by, took one