Every Leaky Pipe Has a Silver Lining? (Bathroom Reno, Part 2)

Last night was a flurry of productive activity. We sped up to the flooring centre after work to finalize a colour of marmoleum tile to put on the bathroom floor. Then we headed home to begin putting things back together, final goal: bathe. The idea, you see (and you can already see where this is going can't you) was to do the following so that we could move the bathtub back into place and hook it up again for suddsy, washing good times:

• Give the gyprock mud one last sand;
• Clean up the room of the evil drywall dust from hell;
• Apply primer coat of paint;
• Eat dinner;
• Apply first coat of wall paint (Benjamin Moore Cloud White if you're interested) to walls and ceiling;
• Apply second coat of paint at a minimum to the walls around the tub enabling the moving back of said tub;
• Apply third coat if necessary to walls and ceiling.
• Reattach plumbing.
• Clean out tub and bathe!

Everything up to "bathe!" went pretty darn well. The paint tried in no time (not like the evil, evil drywall mud) and went on smoothly. While I raced through the painting process (each coat only took about an hour) Martin was busy working on the boxes that will become our new recessed storage and medicine cabinet. And finally at the end of the night with the walls and beautifully painted and the room relatively clean, Martin got out the wrenches and new pipes.

Martin is really a wonder (to me anyway) when it comes to handiness, but he proclaims to be somewhat mystified by plumbing. Me? What I know about plumbing could fit in our tiny bathroom sink. But, armed with confidence and knowledge imparted by the folks at Rona and a plumbing friend, Martin got started reattaching things. And it all went so well! Easy. Simple. No leaking from the water source pipes. At all! I was one step closer to getting my very painty self into a nice tub. And then, (you know what's coming) Martin ran downstairs to watch the water drain pipes as our test inch of water drained out of the tub.

I pulled the plug and shouted downstairs to him: "Ok, here we go!" in what can only be described as a voice of ecstatic anticipation. The first thing I heard back was an affirmative "Ok! Yep!" followed by a pause of seconds which felt like hours, that I filled with dreams of luxurious tubs, wet clean hair and lovely warm bamboo towels. My reveries were then sharply interupted with "Help! I need help! I need a bucket!" coming from below.

It would seem, and here's where the possible silver lining comes in, that the trap (for those not in the know, a little screw bit that sits in the bottom of the U-Joint of your drain pipe for cleaing and rescue of bits that may have fallen down the drain) has disintegrated in Martin's hand. There is no way that this was caused by the work we've been doing all week. And in fact, had we not been draining the tub in tandem, one below watching every inch of pipe to see what happened, we may not have discovered our bathwater running behind our washer and dryer for quite some time. So: silver lining?

It certainly didn't feel like it last night as I had yet another bird bath in front of the kitchen sink while dreams of total body submersion faded into the distance. And there is now a very real possibility that much more than just our trap is hooped and that some major replacement is in order. We find out this weekend when Martin's plumber pal comes over to assess and (oh dear lordisa please) fix our plumbing situation. Please think good thoughts for our pipes would you? And in the meantime, I'll be at the twoonie swim at the Community Centre this week hogging the shower.

Comments

[Mena]

You're welcome to come over and use our shower/tub anytime.

[Dwane Zelinsky]

Going without a decent shower reminds me of the importance of regular inspection of our house plumbing. Leaky pipes can happen to anyone. The most we can do is catch it early to prevent bigger problems. I hope your problem with the leaky pipe is okay now.