Monday, February 1, 2016

Part I: The unexpected bathroom renovation

For those of you who are wondering why my posts have been sporadic lately:

I was sidetracked by another project.
You see, my shower drain broke.
and not just broke, like a miniscule leak or something minor, no.
It fell through the floor.

One morning, while I was showering, I accidentally stepped on the 'no-no zone'—
that questionable circle in the middle of the shower floor that I've avoided stepping on for over a year.
But not that morning.
No, my foot must have had a mind of it's own, because it landed smack-dab on top of the drain with all my weight behind it.

and that was when the drain pipe dropped through the floor, taking my heel along with it.

So there I was, naked, wet, and bleeding with my foot lodged partway between the bathroom and the crawlspace. Plastic shower pans apparently double as razor blades.

and better yet, I had a meeting that morning, which meant a long (long) trek across the med center. When the back of your heel is sliced open, every footstep causes it to crack open and bleed more, especially when your speed-walking to a meeting, because your neighborhood was surrounded by stopped trains and your house has 30 keys—2 for each door— all which look exactly the same and none of which work very well in the first place.

Back home that afternoon, I crawled under the house to investigate, having decided that we better fix this lickity-ding-dong-split otherwise I'd be showering under a pizza pan with a garden hose over it again. Did I mention it was 36 degrees outside? I've paid my dues—the pizza pan was not a solution this time.

'Easy,' I thought, 'it's just a shower drain. Let's just go secure that thing back into place.'

But of course, in a comedy of errors, I ended up trapped in a tangled web of 50 year old galvanized pipes. 

I'm a pretty limber guy with a small stature, yet there was no way I could limbo through that mess of pipes to reach the shower drain. 

The only way to repair the shower drain was to either a) tear the floor out, or b) remove and replace the pipes.

Those of you who have worked with jungle jims of corroded, old, galvanized pipe know where I'm going with this. The solution was to tear the floor out so that the old pipes could more easily be replaced.

This seemingly minor inconvenience had turned into an unexpected, immediate bathroom renovation. 

(to be continued in Part II: She demanded a toilet)

1 comment:

  1. The amount of information is stunning and also a gainful article for us. Keep sharing this kind of articles, Thank you.Crawlspace

    ReplyDelete