In for a long soak
By Never teh BrideLike many people of the female persuasion, I love old fashioned bathtubs. I think my love affair with them began when I was tiny enough to be bathed by gentle hands in my great grandmother’s monstrous claw foot tub. How could I not love a bathroom fixture with feet? Put little tootsies on the toilet and I would have been in heaven!
The apartment I lived in before buying my house had a lot going for it. For one thing, it was cheap for the outskirts of Boston. It was relatively huge and had a porch big enough for two chairs, a table, a grill, and my collection of growing things in pots. The main downsides were the flaking floors, the omnipresent funky smell in the bathroom, a freezer that resembled Hoth, the ice planet, no matter how often we defrosted, and the landlord himself, for he was old and dimwitted.
Now I must (for the time being) content myself with a plain, boring, and slightly scratched up built-in tub. If the enamel on it was fresh and white and unblemished, it might not be so bad, but no matter how hard you scrub and sweat and swear, it simply never looks clean. I’d gladly swap it out for this tub of hand-formed and hammered copper!
Or this one, with its dainty little feet. Perhaps some of the magic of the claw foot tub lies in the fact that it might, just maybe, come to life and start sloshing itself about your abode like a happy puppy one day. Sure, that might freak me or you out, but the kids will adore it if the movies are any indication.
All three of these tubs are available at Handcrafted Metal, which coincidentally is having a bit of a sale right now. Not, of course, that a sale price means much when you’re spending $4,000 on what amounts to a large vessel…but what a pretty vessel it is, right?
March 21st, 2008 at 9:23 am
Claw-footed copper tubs???WANT!!!!
And it’s not just the kiddies. My favorite bit in The Nightmare Before Christmas is Lock, Shock and Barrel’s walking clawfoot bathtub…well, that and the truly twisted and wrong song that goes with.
I would totally do a bathroom around that tub.
March 21st, 2008 at 9:46 pm
NtB, You can have your existing tub resurfaced so it’s soiled and bedraggled appearance does not offend. The method would depend on whether it was an acrylic or cast iron tub. The first usually has a liner applied, the second is repainted. Both work surprisingly well if the installer is competent…
March 21st, 2008 at 11:34 pm
I covet these tubs, but I’d worry, too. I heard about a copper tub that was installed at great expense, but copper is of course a heat conductor and when filled with hot water the tub itself was uncomfortably warm. The rich owner’s decorator then had a $14000 (yes, that’s three zeros) teak liner made.
Which floated.
I think bathtubs would be better designed if more bathtub designers were female. What is the point of a tub in which one’s body parts stick up like volcanic islands? All tubs should be deep enough to submerge the Islets of Delight easily, yes?