Just can't get a break - oops I said break!
So Friday our resident Queer Eye swung by in the morning to say howdy as we were busy clearing out tools etc and he noticed some standing water on the guest bathroom floor. F*#K!
Unable to pinpoint the leak - or get a plumber out before the open houses, I just shut off the water at the street.
Today the plumber came by and our worst nightmare has come true. There is a leak under the concrete slab floor in the guest bath.
Leak under slab = jackhammers = big mess = we can't show the damn house.
Not to mention the flippin' cost!
Frickety fuckity feck.
Hopefully we'll get it fixed by the weekend but in the mean time we'll miss the weekly realtor caravan and anyone who wanted to set up an appointment.
But hey - these things happen and in a way, I'm relieved it happened now. It's totally fixable and really, better it happen now than during escrow. Definitely better for a buyer however you look at it, that's for sure.
But for me - it's the last thing I wanted to deal with on a Monday morning.
Is that 7 years bad luck?
The Missus and I have been up since 4 o'clock this morning and I am about to drop dead. The reason for the ungodly hour is that the heat during the day is so intense right now that in order to finish up work in the house we have to start before dawn when it's only 80º out.
[click images to enlarge]
We had the shower enclosure installed yesterday. Everything was going in just fine until... tap tap tap... "Uh, Ma'am? I'm afraid we have a little problem..."
That's never good, and rarely is it ever "little" when said that way.
They cracked three of my tiles. I immediately got on the phone with my sales rep at the glass place. I don't want to mention the name of the glass place until we get it all figured out, so I'll just refer to them as "Tragic Glass" for now...
So my gal at Tragic Glass apologized and promised to pay for the repairs. About an hour later, she calls back saying she didn't have the authority to make that promise and she'd see what she could work out.
As it stands today, I don't think they are going to pay for it, which infuriates me. It's not the money really, the repair cost in nominal in the grand scheme of things ($60) ... No, it's the principle. You installed something, you broke something, you fix it. I was clear on the other side of the house so I know I didn't break the damn tiles.
Aside from broken tiles, it's gorgeous and I'm very pleased. I'm not that crazy about the handle, but I think we can find something else that will look a bit better than that 80's tubular chrome.
We've been sealing the VCT floors, which has turned out to be twice as much work as I anticipated. It's HARD work too. But the pay off is worth it. They shine so bright they look like glass. As I was on my hands and knees scrubbing, the Missus walked in and said in a very sad cute little voice "I'm sorry Cinderella..."
And then I turned her into a pumpkin...
Shower Pan
All the plumbing and electrical work is done with the exception of new stem valves and misc. little stuff. The shower demo and new shower pan are done! When I got down to demo-ing the old shower pan (which had rotted out) I discovered that there really wasn't a shower pan at all... They just poured the mortar on the sand. I neglected to take any pictures, but there were roots all around the drain. Now normally, you have several layers to a shower pan (the floor of your shower)
1) sub-floor, either wood or concrete
2) liner (either lead in old homes, or new PVC vinyl)
3) mortar bed
4) thin set
5) tile
We didn't have 1 or 2. No sub-floor, just mortar on desert sand, and no liner, thus the reason it failed. It didn't exist!
(click to enlarge)
But now everything should be good to go. We'll hang cement board this week and begin tiling soon
Guest Shower Demo
(click images to enlarge)
This shower has now become my nightmare. The shower pan had rotted out and needed to be replaced, so we decided to rip the whole thing out and put in a new shower. Little did I know that back in '59 (this is all original tile) they took their mortar beds very seriously. In the second picture you may note that it's about 2.5 inches thick. It took me 3 hours to get this far. The pounding I had to give this @#$*! wall to break it up has caused my right arm and hand to go numb. I can barely lift my cocktail! The horror!
