You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
New England can be a harsh place. Its winter is long, with snow possible October into April or even longer, at least where I live.
You’re never far from earlier generations, either. They’re hardy as stone.
Each month sinks down through centuries.
As do the poems in this almanac.
The new year’s just around the corner. For your own copy, click here.
~*~
When I see this …
… I think of this.
For the free ebook novel and more, click here.
When I see this …
… I think of this.
For the free ebook novel and more, click here.
From the outset, we could see our bathroom project would encompass more than just the second-floor chamber in question itself. Other crucial home repair issues of longer standing would finally demand attention in the sequence of labor at hand.
For starters, the bulkhead to the cellar had to be replaced. Bulkhead? In many old houses, it’s the entryway to the cellar, from outdoors. (Note that I say cellar and not basement – in my mind, cellars flood and require a sump pump. You don’t put a Ping Pong table down there much less try to “finish” a room.) Our bulkhead’s plywood covering had rotted badly and was padlocked from the outdoors. (Where was the key these days, anyway?) A temporary plywood layer, covered in plastic, had been dropped over the bulkhead several years ago to prevent anyone from falling through to the stairway below. As I said, temporary.
The bulkhead? What’s that got to do with the second-floor, you ask?
Just start with the plumbers who would have to access the plumbing under the house. And then let’s add the carpenter’s need to have a place to set up his table saw and similar shop work.
So replacing the bulkhead turned into a multiday opening round to enable other stages. In an old house like ours, with all of its amateur “improvements,” finding anything on the market that will fit our existing conditions can be a challenge. As we found, accommodating the nearest-size metal unit would mean building the entry wall up another foot – a good move anyway, considering the way water moves around the house … or into it. Water flowing into the cellar, if you haven’t already guessed, is not good. The bulkhead we found at Home Depot was half the price of the one at our locally owned lumberyard. That’s not always the case, in these projects, but it did sway our decision.
One down, many others to go.
At one time before we bought the house, a first-floor cubbyhole had contained a small toilet, shower, and vanity, but these were no longer usable, separated by a second section where our clothes washer and dryer were jammed in. Once our upstairs bathroom was torn up, we’d need a toilet, at the least. (We could use my mother-in-law’s shower in her apartment in the barn or, more likely for me, the ones at the indoor pool where I swim most days.) So restoring the toilet was added to the picture, for use while the upstairs work was being done. Follow this?
We’d have the toilet from upstairs moved to the first floor so the upstairs work could continue, and then return upstairs when the bathroom itself was completed and our attention turned to the downstairs space.
In the bigger picture, this space – two small connected rooms, actually – could be transformed. If we removed the useless shower, with its rotting floor and falling tile, we could use that corner for a stacking clothes washer and dryer, which would then free up the entryway for a food pantry and broom closet, where the vacuum cleaner might also reside. (Whew!) A usable toilet here, of course, would be a welcome convenience, especially when we had company over. Let’s just call that the Utility Room Project, steps one and two.
While we were at it, under the house, we’d need to address our dying hot-water heater and sump pump, which takes us back to the cellar and that bulkhead. And since we had the electrical lines in the bathroom already exposed, we decided to rewire an adjacent bedroom where only one outlet functioned.
As I’m becoming ever fonder of saying, the plot thickened.
It’s hardly worth mentioning the overdue hallway repainting that moved up on the list.
~*~
My poems on the challenges of renovations, repairs, and relating as a husband are collected as Home Maintenance, a free ebook at Thistle/Flinch editions.
Ideally, we would have simply signed up with one contractor to redo the bathroom. Somebody with carpentry, electrical, plumbing, and flooring crew all on one sheet – come in, rip it out, replace it, and be gone in a day or two.
As I said, ideally. It’s not what you typically encounter, especially in an older house. Want an estimate? Everything depends on the unknown terrors hiding behind the walls or under the floor. Surprise, surprise.
What we found in practice as we set out this time around was that the plumbers were in an uncommonly busy period, compounded by a heart attack or two. And suddenly the flooring crew was flush with assignments. What should have been a two-week undertaking expanded into two months – over Christmas, at that. And that fell into just the bathroom part of a bigger campaign. As my wife learned, you can spend a lot of time playing telephone tag.
We’re not even talking Martha Stewart. We’re talking real life where we live. (Who knows how they do this in Europe. Or South America. Or Asia.) At least we didn’t have to consider bribery or physical violence.
A bathroom, after all, is the height of civility.
~*~
My poems on the challenges of renovations, repairs, and relating as a husband are collected as Home Maintenance, a free ebook at Thistle/Flinch editions.
When I see this …
… I think of this.
For the free ebook novel and more, click here.
We could say it all began with squirrels. The ones that ate through the metal flashing around our central chimney to gain access to our wall interiors, something we learned about only after a particularly nasty winter storm ripped the metal crown and top layers of brick off the chimney itself and into our driveway. Blew them, in fact, the opposite direction from the nor’easter itself.
You couldn’t see the flashing problem from the ground – that was something the mason discovered only once he was up on the roof. At least that got fixed.
A few years later, we noticed some discoloration in part of the vinyl flooring of the bathroom two floors below – something that slowly spread until part of the floor itself became spongy. Were water infiltration from the chimney and the rotting floor linked? Or was this an unrelated problem? It’s the sort of problem that homeowners too often encounter, not only a This Old House experience, either. Welcome to the club?
Our usual handyman, a combination carpenter and licensed electrician, was booked out for months, and inquiries in other circles proved equally futile. Everybody was busy. (Career advice for young adults? This is a great field. Be your own boss. Set your own hours. Essential service.)
Our own cash flow was another matter, one that had me trying to delay as long as it, in turn, didn’t lead to even more costly problems. These things can be a kind of balancing act. Over time, I’ve come to look at home ownership not so much as an investment but rather an opportunity at free rent, repaid when you finally sell the place. But that’s a long-range view.
Of course, there was no way for us to know what we were really in for until we ripped up the floor. Was the wall behind it full of mold? Would we have to get into the shower plumbing by ripping into the wall from the bedroom on the other side? (Another big project all on its own.) Or would we have to rip out some of the wall in the dining room below – something that’s on the longer term to-do list anyway?
These things can snowball.
I had hoped we could hold off another year, till the mortgage was paid off. But that was being optimistic and ignored the arguments from other partners in the household.
And then our handyman had an opening in his bookings. The summer jobs were over. It was time for us to get serious. Ready or not, here we go.
Who knew what we’d really be in for? Yes, our latest journey was about to begin. Let’s just call it the Bathroom Project.
~*~
My poems arising in squirrel encounters and domestic survival are collected as Rat-Tat Oscar, a free ebook at Thistle/Flinch editions.
Jnana's Red Barn 