2004-10-28 12:24 PM
Bathroom Chaos: Before The Sledgehammer Falls
How lucky am I that I get to go through a bathroom remodel not once but twice? This time, though, it's with materials that I get to pick, and it's taking way, way longer. Don't ask me how that works -- all I know is that while the apartment bathroom took four days, the one in my house, which isn't much bigger, will take "four to six weeks." One of my coworkers, who's already gone through a bathroom remodel, translated this to "May."
It all started with the dripping in the shower. The plumber came out and poked at it a bit, then confirmed his diagnosis after calling his warehouse: terminally old plumbing. Too old for the original manufacturer to make parts for it any more and too new for some retro plumbing house to pick up the slack. So if we don't want to keep turning the shower faucets on and off with a pair of pliers (and the stems of the faucets are already getting a little too slick for the pliers anyway), then the whole thing has to go.
And if the shower plumbing goes, then the 1950s pink tile in the shower enclosure goes. And if the shower enclosure goes, then the matching floor tile needs to go too, because it will no longer match, and TheBoy has been rooting for the demise of the tile since I bought the house anyway. And if we're ripping up the floor, why put the heinous '80s plywood vanity back in when it could be replaced with something much nicer? And if the vanity goes, the wall behind it has that weird paint pile-up around the edges of the vanity and that'll have to be cleaned up, and while we're tinkering with the walls there's that bit with the perma-mold on it, and if we're taking out drywall anyway then why not replace that flimsy, crapass aluminum frame window that doesn't close properly and is just a break-in waiting to happen, and even a new window won't be secure enough to leave open all the time so wouldn't it be a good idea to just put in a fan to take care of the mold problem and be done with it?
This is how major remodeling projects -- and nervous breakdowns -- are born.