We Had Other Plans

Remember how God was smiling on us? He suddenly got a glint in His eye and said, "Watch this!"

We had grand plans to do lots of cleaning, sorting, packing, and some DIY projects over the weekend. One of the DIY's was to install a new throne in the guest bath (the cat's bathroom).

You see, the Master throne suffered a mechanical breakdown some weeks ago. The parts on the underside of the tank that aren't supposed to leak suddenly decided to become deviant plumbing parts and drip water all over the floor. Since we already collect the shower water for flushing, I turned off the water to the toilet tank and life went on. Eventually we bought the parts for repair, but when Hubby reinstalled the renovated tank, it cracked. Well, poo. Literally.

Now comes a Home Depot "Spend Money Don't Pay Interest for 12 Months" card in the mail. Woo Hoo! Time to go throne shopping!

Let it be known that I am picky about that on which I perch my Self. My throne has to be elongated, not round. It has to be bone/beige/biscuit, not white. Home Depot has lots of white porcelain fixtures, but not many beige. After considerable time standing around studying the toidies that were displayed on a shelf about 10 feet off the ground (do they have a problem with people walking out with toilets??), we decided on a modest fixture priced at about $140 for tank and bowl. Only problem, they only had white.

I flagged down a disgruntled employee and inquired as to the availability of bisque/bone/tan/beige for my bathroom furniture. "Oh, sure," he assured me, "we can order it in that color, but it'll cost more than $140." I knew that. All my appliances are beige/tan/bone, wheat, and I pay $25 or so on top of the white price to get the other color. He continued: "It'll run about two hundred ninety-eight dollars."

Excuse me?? Do they hand grind the bones? What's up with that??? Ya know what he said? "It's a sign of the times." My lilly white arm pits it is. It's a sign that someone figured out a way to fleece the public and blame it on "the crumbling economy."

In the end, we purchased a round bowl throne with a plan in mind....

We rarely use the guest bathroom since it's been the home to countless cats over the past two years. It's kinda grubby, there's litter all over the floor and wedged under the baseboards, and there's stuff on the walls. High on the walls. How do cats get it up on the walls? "Watch how high I can jump and squat at the same time!" I digress...

The bowl in there is rust stained from neglect, so Hub suggested we remove the toilet from the guest bath and replace it with the new, round-bowl, bone/tan/beige/biscuit throne. He'll take the tank from the old setup and put it on the eloooongated Master throne. While the guest bathroom is throneless, I would paint the walls and scrub the floor and baseboards, not necessarily in that order.

We were having a great time yesterday - Hubby was actually pleasant while doing his manly toilet shuffling, and La was helping clean and organize. I had most of the guest bath floor scrubbed and the litter scraped from under the baseboards. Out of the blue, Hubby burst forth from the bedroom and went tearing out the front door! My first thought was that we had a grass fire (scary, since he removed the outside spigot during the broken water pipe fiasco). But, it was worse. When he was connecting the tank inlet to the waterline in the bathroom, the pipe broke and we had an instant water feature in the bathroom! Yeah, not only did it break, it broke under the floor.

Poor Hubby's happy mood went down the drain. He started researching what to do, and decided he would take out the bathroom floor to get to the water line.

I don't think so!

We live in a mobile home, for pity sake. Crawl underneath, cut the insulation, and fix the pipe.

We yelled at each other about it for a while, but I would not budge on the hole in the floor. He finally gathered his tools and crawled under the house. I don't think he was too happy with me.

He discovered that, under the wet areas, there were bolted pieces of plywood to the floor joists. He struggled getting it off, lying on his back, holding the power screwdriver over his head, trying to remove screws from wood. He finally got it off, water pouring all over him, only to find another piece of wood underneath. Again, lying on his back holding the power driver over his head, he removed the wood. Guess what he found? Yep, another piece of plywood.

By this time, he's starting to use unsavory words, and he's calling the builders at Solitaire unflattering names.

It took him an hour to get all the layers of plywood off the underbelly of the house. He scratched around in the fiberglass and finally found the water pipe. It was framed in. Seriously. They built a frame around the water lines. He could wiggle his hand into the space, but he couldn't see what he was doing.

Hours later, after trimming the pipe (I threaded a wire PVC cutter through the inlet hole in the bathroom floor and sawed the pipe from the bathroom while he held it steady underneath), prepping the PVC and burning his hands when he got primer on his skin, and finally getting the whole mess cemented back together, we were ready to test it at 11:45 last night.

Hubby sat under the house while I turned on the water at the meter; sloooowly , as I didn't want to send a gush of water down the line and blow the new pieces apart. I could hear the water start to spew through the valve, a little more, it got a little louder, and Hubby shouted, "Turn it off!!"

It leaked.

We went to bed dirty, thirsty, and disappointed.

This morning, off to Home Depot to buy more supplies, a new pipe cutter that he could put up in the framework to get a clean cut on the pipe, more elbows and connections. He spilled more primer on his hands, scraped his arms, tore up his hands, but this time it worked! We have water again.

So, the Master throne is working again, Hubby installed a new shower head that I hate (my ancient Shower Massage was leaking more than it was spraying), and he fixed the broken exhaust fan in the guest bath. I didn't get the guest bath painted and I still have some stuff to scrub off the floor and walls, but that will keep for another day.

Right now, we're all pooped, but we're clean.