Thank goodness they have their safety goggles on! When Liam falls from his precarious stoop after burning himself on the light bulb, or pounding the crowbar into the electrical wire, or inhaling the asbestos; his eyes will be fine. Yes, he is wearing ski goggles. We do live in the mountains, you know.
Once upon a time, I decided that there was something I disliked about the bathroom. And, there was this leak. And, I had this great wrecking bar from Lee Valley. If you can't guess the rest, here's a refresher. It took me a while to find this link since it happened almost a year ago. I have to admit that I'm a little embarrassed right now. It seems that I have been living with this half morphed bathroom a little longer than the month or so that I believed it to be.
Well, moving on.
I proceeded to take the one full bathroom in our house from really unattractive to completely unusable in five painful steps.
Stay tuned to find out the price of Lipton's Tea back in the day when the original home owners used the boxes to insulate the second floor.
This morning, over coffee, I am staring at my mutilated fingers and wondering what part of my grossly deformed ego makes me think that I can renovate.
Every time something in the house needs to be fixed, removed, replaced, attached, straightened or coloured; two things happen. Firstly, I make a very small project into something that could better be handled by a wrecking ball. Secondly, the gremlins who live in the back of my soul known as Pain and Idiocy sneak to the part of my brain that houses Common Sense and ponder the prospective project and then say, "How tough can it be? I've been to University. You certainly don't need a degree to do this." I shake my head even now.
There was a leak from the shower / bath area into the basement. It started after Liam bathed the dogs so I originally thought that it was the resulting flood that seeped through somewhere. But no, it persisted; he had, once again, broken something.
Then entering onto the scene; the Enabler, my Ex. He says to me, "Did you notice that you have a leak into the basement that gets worse when someone is having a shower?" No, dear, the buckets were there to catch the Leprechauns and Rainbows that I suspect are bouncing around down there. Well, now it has to be addressed and fixed.
For a change of pace, I will tell you the punchline first, all in technical terms, of course.
The pipe that joins the main pipe to the showerhead; was loose. Yes, half a turn and it was all better.
There are people in this world who continually pick at the edge of a scab even though we know it can cause bleeding and scarring. Picture that, but on the scale of an entire bathroom. I had to, at the very least, tear down The Eyesore, better known as the permanently-stained-bathtub-surround, to be able to appropriately visualize the problem in its entirety. Well, that's garbage now. Also, I've never liked the linoleum that covers the rest of the walls in the bathroom, or those ridiculous ceiling tiles for that matter. And, behind all that was glue-covered plywood that was a little wet at the bottom. Well, of course that has to go; that glue could be toxic and, we won't even discuss the effect that mildew spores can have on our lungs. So, after removing around 1084 nails with a hammer and crowbar, the plywood is gone. Imagine my surprise to find behind all that, tongue'n'groove 1 x 6 inch planks of wood horizontally nailed across the studs, floor to ceiling.
Apparently I live in a log cabin cleverly disguised as a house.
The Ex now says to me, "If you are thinking of ever replacing the bathtub, now would be the time, while you can still remove the doorframe."
Well, that would just be silly now, wouldn't it.
I have now replaced the tub surround, which almost fits, and I will be trying to find some professional to put up some walls, and a ceiling. Hell, I know my limitations.
And, the little pipe that goes from the main pipe to the showerhead has been tightened. No more leak.
