Who-Poo

Maybe you’re different.  Maybe you, reading this, have plans you’ve methodically scheduled.  Your life is going according to your list.  Everything’s steady.  You’ll get where you’re going and you can predict the arrival time.

I have no idea what that feels like.  Charlie and I thought we’d be done with this house in two years.  All the other houses we’ve done took two years or less.  None of them had foundation problems and none of them were done while living with teenagers.  We didn’t factor any of this into our estimated completion time.  We didn’t factor anything into our estimated completion time.  We’ve done fixers before.  We don’t need to estimate.

We’ve learned the hard way timelines and schedules work for anyone, no matter how much A.D.D. you have to overcome.  We’re really getting sick of this house.  We’ll do anything to get it done.  We’re desperate, so we’re scheduling.

Charlie took a whole week off to destroy the 32 years of crap we call the upstairs bathroom.  A week should be enough, we thought.  It’s only old and ugly; it’s not in ashes.  We can do this.  We’ll even have fun getting rid of the press-on mexican-themed linoleum floor squares, the cheapest vanity sold in 1973, and the possessed overflowing toilet from hell.

You can’t start a remodel vacation without a trip to Home Depot.  We even made a list, assuming we could get everything we needed without extra trips for missing hardware.  Charlie shopped for all the boring things, like wallboard, and I picked out the tub. 

I’ve been whining for a whirlpool ever since I saw a HGTV show where the family bought a house just because the wife wanted the whirlpool.  I want someone to buy our house.  If the wife gets starry-eyed over the whirlpool tub, maybe she won’t notice she’s buying a house without a master bedroom or master bath.  I picked out a pretty one.

Charlie tried to sway me.  “It’d be so easy to replace the tub with a regular tub.  I don’t know what extra parts I need.”

A Home Depot guy, appearing from nowhere, said, “All you need is a universal drain kit.  Here’s one.”

Charlie was completely sold on the whirlpool tub after hearing how easy it’d be to install and how it might distract potential homeowners.  He drove home very excited.  “Who-poo!” he kept saying.  “Who-poo!  We got us a who-poo tub!”

He woke up, ready to work.  It’s vacation, so we had to catch up on daytime TV.  There’s nothing to catch up on but that didn’t stop us.  We enjoyed watching poker even though neither one of us knew what we were looking at.  We watched “Made” on MTV, which made me cry every time a fat girl achieved her dream of being a lifeguard.  When the rich cheerleader from Vero Beach achieved her dream of becoming a skateboarder, I didn’t cry but I stopped swearing.  Her house didn’t have a bathroom worthy of the Middle Ages. 

The first thing Charlie did was bust up the stained, old tub.  In the first house we fixed up together, Charlie called all his strong friends to help lift out the cast iron tub.  They all pulled their backs while the tub stayed put. 

I went in to see why they were whining.  “Just get a sledgehammer,” I said.  They didn’t think it would work.  I went back to being a girl while they tried, and quickly broke it up in pieces.  “I wish I’d thought of that sooner,” they said, amazed at my skills and extensive knowledge.

Charlie collected the cast iron pieces in a recycle bin.  Since he couldn’t lift the tub, he probably shouldn’t lift the pieces but he didn’t realize this until too late.  He pulled his back during the first part of the first job on his first week of vacation. 

He didn’t stop working.  Instead, we took longer while catching up on daytime TV while I rubbed the big knot in his back.  We still don’t know anything about poker, though.  I didn’t rub that long.

Charlie pulled off walls and found the studs dry-rot free.  This is the first time we’ve pulled off a wall and not found problems.  It might be a good week after all.

While making adjustments to the floor, things returned to normal.  Charlie found enough dry rot to have to replace much of the floor sheeting.  Usually he has spare building materials around, but he was out of ¾” ply, the standard thickness.

He made a trip to Home Depot and returned with his sheeting.  After taking the time to cut a template, cut the sheeting, and fit it on the floor, he noticed the sheeting was not standard ¾” but 5/8”.  He couldn’t return it since he’d cut into it.  Being cheap, this was almost as upsetting as wasting half the afternoon on this uselessness.  He returned to Home Depot one more time.

“They had every size but ¾”,” Charlie said when he came back.  “They had ¾” pressboard, so I bought that.  I’m tired.”

He cut the pressboard to fit, then remembered he’s doing a bathroom.  When pressboard gets wet it turns into pasta.  He realized this after he cut into this, too, so again he couldn’t return it.  “Why did I do that?” he said.  By this time it was so late, all the stores were closed.  His day was involuntarily over.

Around noon, he got going and headed out to Lowe’s.  “Remind me never to go to Lowe’s again,” he said when he returned.  “You walk down the aisle and the clerks scatter like cockroaches.  If they don’t disappear, it’s because they’re stocking.  If you dare want something near them, they’ll sigh and make disgusted-type noises until you get out of the way.”

It took him only a few minutes to cut out the correct size plywood and replace the floor sheeting.  He should have tried to savor this part of the job as much as he could; plumbing is next. 

He put together the universal drain kit and found out the universal drain was way too short.  Once again, he took a visit to Home Depot.  He found the plumbing clerk and asked him what to do. 

“You’ll have to buy one of these $65 whirlpool drain kits.”

You don’t know Charlie if you think he’ll spend $65 on a couple of pvc pipes.  Instead, he found a longer extension pipe to match the whirlpool opening depth and saved himself close to $65.

He put his new drain kit together and it looked like it’d work.  He rounded up all the teenaged boys in the house to help him lift the whirlpool in for a dry-fit.  That’s when he noticed the drain flange extended beyond the lip of the tub, meaning it wouldn’t clear the studs on the opening of the tub.  One more trip to Home Depot.

The same plumbing clerk came by to see why Charlie was in his aisle once again.  He explained his problem.

“That’s why we sell this $65 drain kit,” he said.  “The smaller flange clears the studs.”

“This universal drain kit isn’t so universal, is it?”

“I guess not.”

Charlie decided to go to the professionals at the plumbing store.  One of the clerks there remembered him from his previous toilet installation problems.  Charlie explained his drain dilemma and within a few minutes, he had a proper fitting drain kit.  He may have spent half the day with this one problem, but he saved $40.  It’s Charlie’s vacation.  If this is how he wants to spend it, who am I to complain?  I don’t want to push it: this tub would be done if I wasn’t wanting a who-poo.

Charlie bolted it all together and it looked like it’d work fine.  Before completing the installation, he decided to read the instructions.  The motor needed a single dedicated line from the breaker panel; something he hadn’t figured in.  He went out to the breaker panel to have a look.

“I’m going to be smart this time,” he said.  He called Home Depot first to see if they carried Cutler-type breakers.

“Of course,” they said.

He was on his way, once again, to Home Depot.  He returned without incident.

The rest of his vacation day was spent crawling around old blown insulation well past its prime, drilling hole, and fishing line from the future tub to the fuse box.

Charlie put the tub in place one more time to make sure everything fit.  Amazingly, it did.  Next, the whirlpool manufacturer recommended applying a wrap-around adhesive gasket all around the tub before installing it.  Charlie did what he was told. 

He and the spare teenagers put the tub in place again, or would have if it’d fit.  With the recommended gasket, the tub is ¾” longer.  This is when I decided to get out of the house and do errands.

“I pulled the tub out,” he told me when I returned, “and cut a slab into perfectly good drywall.  I had to create a slot to slide the tub through so it’d land in its new home.”

“Does it work?”

“All except for the drainage pipe,” he said.  “It’s supposed to hook into the universal drain pipe but it’s four inches off.  I had to make another trip to you-know-where to get more pipe to make up for the four inches and get another p-trap.  The p-trap is full of goo.”

He tells me while he’s looking for plumbing parts, he overhears a customer ask the Home Depot clerk how to go from a 1 ½” to 1 ¼” reducer for a sink.  They don’t make this part.  “I don’t know,” the clerk says, “I’m in electrical.”  He called on the phone.  Nobody knew.

“I couldn’t help myself.  ’All you need is a compression ring,’ I said.  I showed him the ring and cap to use.  I know how frustrating it is not to get an answer.

“The customer said, ‘thank you, thank you, thank you.’

“When I was ready to return to my search for plumbing parts, another guy came up to me asking a question.  It was then I noticed I had a line of customers waiting for my advice.”

“’I have a drain that won’t fit,’ the next guy said.

“I don’t work here.

“’Yeah, but you a plumber.’

“I’m not a plumber, I said.  I don’t know anything.  You don’t want to ask me.”

“He showed me his problem anyway.  I said, ‘Oh, that’s easy.’  He couldn’t get a good seal.  ‘Just use plumber’s putty.’”

“’Oh.  Good idea,’ the guy said.  ‘Plumber’s putty.  I never thought of that.  That would seal the gap.’

“Yeah, that stuff works,’ I said.

The Home Depot clerk said, ‘Hey, you want a job?’

“’No,’ I said.  ‘I’ve already got two.  Thanks anyway.’”

He spent the rest of the day installing the extension and the goo-free p-trap.  One week later, we’ve got a who-poo.

“The only bright spot in this whole who-poo week,” Charlie said as he was getting ready for work this morning, “is that when I was in the plumbing store explaining my dilemma, there was another customer standing there complaining.

“’Every time I do a plumbing project,’ he said, ‘it involves at least three trips to the plumbing store before I find out what’s wrong.’

“’If you’re only doing three trips,’ the plumbing clerk said, ‘you’re ahead of everyone else.  ‘I have customers who often take seven trips before they figure out what they need.’

“I felt good that I only made about four trips per problem,” Charlie said.  “I’m within the average.”

It’s nice to feel normal.  I’m already planning Charlie’s next vacation.

A little help? [] 5:56:00 PM