Sharp Corners

I know you’re breathless with anticipation to hear what happened after I finally got my bathroom painted and ready to wear it’s new vanity and mirror, aren’t you? Aren’t you!? Just say yes.

Once the room was properly adorned, J went out and bought a be-yoo-tiful vanity and sink. What we didn’t realize until we took out the old vanity was that the sink’s plumbing was actually located outside the wall (because it is concrete), rather than behind it. This meant that, in order for our new purchase to fit, we either had to cut out the back and bottom of the vanity or build out a wall in front of the plumbing. That’s not such a big deal (plus it gave J an excuse to buy new tools) so it went in fairly easily. Since the plumber was already here wrestling with the dishwasher and garbage disposal, we let him do the honors, wrote a check signing away my firstborn son and sent him on his way. Next time I’ll rent him a room in my house, it would have been easier.

Within forty eight hours, the dishwasher was belching puddles of water and the shower was holding enough water to house a manatee. It turns out that the addition of the washer and fully functional garbage disposal was more than the pipes could handle since they evidently had accumulated years of buildup, gunk and goo. No big deal, said the plumber (in a tone that really meant "this lady’s problem will pay for my trip to Cancun"), let’s just root out the pipes and shove everything into the city’s main water line. Yes, let’s just do that, shall we.

So that’s what he did and I sent him  on his way with another check, my car keys and my heirloom watch. Forty eight hours after that is when the real fun began. J was out for the evening when one of my children casually mentioned on his way to bed that he’d noticed "water on his bathroom floor a while ago." In kidspeak, that generally means sometime in the last nine days. Sure enough, not only was there water on the floor, their bathtub and sink was filling up as well. A cursory check of the kitchen revealed that the dishwasher and kitchen sink were quickly becoming swimming pools, as were my shower stall and bathroom sink. I calmly assessed the situation and realized I was in some deep shit. Literally. You see, this was no ordinary water. This resembled something you might find around Three Mile Island. It was now going on nine o’clock at night and did I mention this was a Sunday? Sundays bring a particular smile to a plumber’s face because they know they can successfully charge $1,745 per hour and homeowners in a jam will happily pay it. As I was contemplating how much liquid the kids drank at dinner to see if they could go without a bathroom until they got to school the next morning, J came home. We chatted amiably for, oh, a good half hour before I actually told him what was going on. In fact, it was only at the point where he sloshed his way into our bathroom that I had to come clean (so to speak). You see, I am cheap, personified. If dental floss is scheduled to go on sale at Wal Mart next month, I will wait for the four cent discount and walk around with spinach in my teeth in the meantime. I knew if I called a plumber, I might as well kiss away my children’s college fund (which I hoped they would spend on learning to become plumbers themselves).

To his credit, rather than freak out, J simply came out of the bathroom with one eyebrow cocked and a questioning look on his face. I innocently said, "What? Oh. Ohhhh…..yeah. Um. That. See, it’s like this…." Of course he made me call the plumber right away despite my attempts at persuading him to just ask the neighbor if we could borrow their bathroom for the next days or so. Hey, a girl’s gotta try, right?

The plumbers had to finish whatever important things they were working on at such an advanced hour (Parcheesi? Calculating string theory?) and finally showed up sometime after 11:00 PM. Okay, a show of hands…..who knows what happened next? If you’re like me, you would assume they’d get some giant plunger or perhaps unleash a beaver into my sewer pipes, right? In fact, they brought out this thirty foot roto-rooter thing, climbed up on my roof and slid it down the innards of my house so they could drill out whatever blocked the way. It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. Furthermore, it was freakin’ loud. Had I not been privy to what was occurring, I would have assumed there was an oil rig parked on my roof, drilling for black gold. I waited inside while my whole house rattled and shook on it’s very foundation….and my children slept through it all. After about fifteen minutes of this, the one guy up there shouted, "AHA!" yanked the drill out and gleefully showed J what the problem was. There were (read at your own risk)…

Read the rest of this entry »

You know, since you people seem to care so much about me, why didn’t you warn me that home improvement projects are enough to give "Fear Factor" contestants pause? Take, for example, the little matter of redoing one of our bathrooms. I have always assumed that the amount of hassle involved in a project is directly proportionate to it’s size. So, for instance, if I had decided to deconstruct the entire back of the house and rebuild it in the style of an 1804 Spanish Armada ship it might cause me a wee bit more stress than, say, renovating a seven-by-seven lavatory. Oh, silly me.

First of all, here’s what you need to know about my bathroom: upon purchase ("Buy this ugly bathroom and we’ll give you the whole house with it!") it had the most ungodly green and gold wallpaper I’ve ever seen. The beautiful, sky-lit cathedral ceilings were obtrusively marred by the installation of a row of cabinets situated five feet above the toilet. They jutted out two feet from the wall, mandating the use of a football helmet while attending to bodily functions. Additionally, the toilet itself was situated about eleven inches from the side of the shower. I was always embarrassed to inform users of this bathroom that they ought to consider a few muscle limbering stretches first because using the commode required adopting yoga poses not commonly seen today. So, now you have the general idea of what I was dealing with.

Smart girl that I am, my first step was consult a plumber about my options. Okay, that’s not strictly true. The plumber was already here trying to sort out how to install a dishwasher into a kitchen that was apparently built before the neighborhood had running water. Figuring I’d kill two birds with one plunger, I led him to the bathroom in question and asked what he thought. First he gasped in horror. Then he clapped his hand over his mouth in a vain attempt to hide his laughter. Finally he gave up, clutched his sides and fell to the floor. I was not amused. After regaining his composure, he assured me that the whole mess was solvable by "pulling down the walls, taking out the shower stall, rerouting all the pipes, pulling up the toilet, smashing out the concrete floor and redirecting the sewer pipes." But, hey, the good news was that the toilet itself was in good shape and could be reused. Yay.

Clearly, it was time for Plan B. What could we do to retain the original integrity of the structures while making the room more functional? J and I thought long and hard (okay, he thought long and hard while I wept quietly in the corner) and we decided to simplify our approach. We would replace the vanity, mirror and cabinets, remove the wallpaper and repaint. Good plan, right? Wrong.

Since the walls are fifteen feet high even the wallpaper/paint project was going to be a huge undertaking. J didn’t have the time to do it and I didn’t have the inclination to perch precariously on a ladder above a concrete floor and hope the dog didn’t decide to turn on me in my moment of weakness. Being a modern day woman, I opted to hire a professional to deal with it and this was where I learned my first lesson. What I am about to tell you is absolutely true. For reasons I may never be able to fully explain, I opted to hire a person who told me he was "sorry he was a whole day late coming over to give me an estimate but he’d been drunk and totally forgot." Needless to say, when it took a full month to strip and paint a small bathroom, I began to question my abilities as a General Contractor. Go-getter that I am, I persevered. I played through the pain. I plodded along. And then came the Great American Bathroom Sink Debacle. More on that later, if you can take it.