the danger of declaring you're bored...
Feb. 17th, 2008 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zanzjan..is that Life might say, "oh, really? Well, then, try THIS on for size!"
Back when I was having my kitchen ripped apart we had a problem where they'd disconnected the old dishwasher and hacksawed through the connecting pipe to the disposal, but then discovered that the new counter had been made wrong and couldn't hook up the new sink and plumbing until a replacement arrived (some four weeks later). What this meant is that they left the old sink in place, with a stubby cut-off open-ended pipe sticking out of the now defunct disposal, and somehow neglected to mention the open pipe to me. What *that* meant was that if you poured enough water down the drain at once, especially if someone, like your mother, was visiting and had stuffed a whole lot of food into the disposal forgetting for the umpteenth time it no longer worked and clogged the whole thing up, the water came out the open pipe instead of down the drain and filled the underside of the cabinet, leaked through the bottom, and dripped into the basement onto the boxes of out of print SF paperbacks you'd stacked in just the wrong place. Once we discovered the problem we were pretty much without sink use for the holidays. I put a bucket beneath the open pipe to catch any unintentional forgetfulness, mopped up the underside of the cabinet as best I could (now somewhat warped), and moved the boxes of books out of the line of fire and put a couple of buckets down in their place. Eventually the new counter came in and was installed along with the new sink and life was good again.
Last night, puttering around the house at 1:00am too restless to go to bed yet, I realized I'd left some groceries in the back of the car (doh!) and put my boots on to go fetch them. Among the groceries was a bag of frozen chicken patties (still frozen, it being more than cold enough outside.) With my current restrictions, I mostly have been making the child stomp down the basement stairs to fetch stuff to/from the freezer, but I wasn't going to wake her up at that hour so down into the back basement I went for the first time in quite a while. Now it's worth noting that, between being more and more immobile by the day AND being a champion procrastinator, I'd never gotten around to removing the buckets. To my surprise one still had a little water in it, and the other had been tipped over and there was a small, drying puddle on the floor. It surprised me because it seemed like the water should've been evaporated by then, but it *is* a basement and it's been very damp outside lately, so what do I know? I picked the bucket up and put it aside and put my chicken pucks in the freezer and went upstairs to take my nightly vitamin regimen.
As I'm standing in the kitchen, I'm thinking, I really am surprised that the water hasn't evaporated by now, even so. As unreasonable as it is to think that something could be wrong -- after all, new sink, new plumbing beneath the sink, no disposal, no open pipe, etc. -- what if there is?
So I stomp back down into the basement and look at the puddle and darned if it doesn't look just a teeny tiny bit bigger. It's my imagination, I think. I grab a big flattened cardboard box and lay it flat on top of the buckets over the entire area and stand there feeling stupid and paranoid for several minutes, and am just about to call myself a fool and go to bed when I hear "splat!"
And sure enough, there's a big wet drop in the middle of the cardboard.
I look up and eventually locate the next drip coming off the elbow of a water pipe -- one that goes up to the sink, of course. So I put the buckets carefully back in the right place and go upstairs and manage to sit myself down on the floor (oh my gods you can't imagine how graceless a process that was, though supremely outdone by the process of getting up again) and open the doors below the sink. I pick up the box of trash bags that's inside the door and the bottom of the box falls out in a wet soggy mess. I clear everything else out and realize that the bottom of the cabinet is now holding over an inch of water and has now warped into a bowl-shape in the middle. The back of the cabinet is also soaked and now moldy as well. The water was only a half-inch or so from the electrical outlet under the sink that the dishwasher plugs into. I freak, grab a nearby towel, and mop out the water as best I can, then start looking for the source of the drip. I do eventually locate it, in a back corner coming off one of the water pipes, in an area too tight to get a bucket under. It's a slightly faster drip than what was coming into the basement because of the "bowl" effect of the cabinet floor bowing down. In the end the only thing I coul do was find something narrow that could be gotten up under the drip but over the hoses on the floor underneath it, but with a larger reservoir attached: I used my antique gravy boat with the spout up under the drip.
The gravy boat, put in place about 2am, was about 3/4 full when I got up to check it at 8:00am. So I've got a six-to-eight hour window in which I need to empty this thing until I can get it fixed.
Part of me wants to call the contractor and give them a bit of a hassle about it. The cabinet is now in rough shape, not to mention the mold, and this is something they should've checked was done right since they picked the plumber they subcontracted to for the work, not I. Of course I suppose *I* should've checked, but I'm not exactly in shape for crawling around on my knees under cabinets, kwim? So of course a big part of me also feels like it's my own fault for not checking this and I shouldn't give the contractors a hard time about it especially after what a huge PITA this job ended up being (none of which was my fault, of course, but that doesn't stop me from feeling somehow bad about the project being difficult for them.) Or I could just call my regular plumber on Monday (or Tuesday, if my plumber happens to take the Monday holiday) and have him out because I *know* he'll get it right, and then I can also get him to look at the upstairs toilet which doesn't seem to want to flush very well at the same time. I think I'd opt immediately for the latter choice if I hadn't just spent a ton of $ getting an electrician out here on Friday to replace the dining room chandelier my parents melted and do a bunch of other minor electrical tasks that I've been saving up for years.
Even if the leak gets fixed, though, it doesn't address the damage now done to the cabinet. It's not visible from the outside and the mold can easily be cleaned up, so part of me wants to just let it go. Am I being stupid? What would you do? I mean, mistakes happen and I've been pretty understanding of the various snafus that have occurred over the course of having this work done (none of which were really the contractor's fault and they've been incredibly good about responding to issues as they arise) and I *LOVE* my new floor and sink and everything, *and* I've been hoping to have them do other work for me in the spring or summer.
I'm just so sick of feeling like I get one thing fixed only to have three other things break, especially when said breaking is so often caused by other people's carelessness. And I feel like I'm never going to get my house back in order at the rate I'm going even WITHOUT stuff going wrong, and this was not what I needed right now. And on top of it all I feel incredibly stupid for not having found this sooner. )-:
Back when I was having my kitchen ripped apart we had a problem where they'd disconnected the old dishwasher and hacksawed through the connecting pipe to the disposal, but then discovered that the new counter had been made wrong and couldn't hook up the new sink and plumbing until a replacement arrived (some four weeks later). What this meant is that they left the old sink in place, with a stubby cut-off open-ended pipe sticking out of the now defunct disposal, and somehow neglected to mention the open pipe to me. What *that* meant was that if you poured enough water down the drain at once, especially if someone, like your mother, was visiting and had stuffed a whole lot of food into the disposal forgetting for the umpteenth time it no longer worked and clogged the whole thing up, the water came out the open pipe instead of down the drain and filled the underside of the cabinet, leaked through the bottom, and dripped into the basement onto the boxes of out of print SF paperbacks you'd stacked in just the wrong place. Once we discovered the problem we were pretty much without sink use for the holidays. I put a bucket beneath the open pipe to catch any unintentional forgetfulness, mopped up the underside of the cabinet as best I could (now somewhat warped), and moved the boxes of books out of the line of fire and put a couple of buckets down in their place. Eventually the new counter came in and was installed along with the new sink and life was good again.
Last night, puttering around the house at 1:00am too restless to go to bed yet, I realized I'd left some groceries in the back of the car (doh!) and put my boots on to go fetch them. Among the groceries was a bag of frozen chicken patties (still frozen, it being more than cold enough outside.) With my current restrictions, I mostly have been making the child stomp down the basement stairs to fetch stuff to/from the freezer, but I wasn't going to wake her up at that hour so down into the back basement I went for the first time in quite a while. Now it's worth noting that, between being more and more immobile by the day AND being a champion procrastinator, I'd never gotten around to removing the buckets. To my surprise one still had a little water in it, and the other had been tipped over and there was a small, drying puddle on the floor. It surprised me because it seemed like the water should've been evaporated by then, but it *is* a basement and it's been very damp outside lately, so what do I know? I picked the bucket up and put it aside and put my chicken pucks in the freezer and went upstairs to take my nightly vitamin regimen.
As I'm standing in the kitchen, I'm thinking, I really am surprised that the water hasn't evaporated by now, even so. As unreasonable as it is to think that something could be wrong -- after all, new sink, new plumbing beneath the sink, no disposal, no open pipe, etc. -- what if there is?
So I stomp back down into the basement and look at the puddle and darned if it doesn't look just a teeny tiny bit bigger. It's my imagination, I think. I grab a big flattened cardboard box and lay it flat on top of the buckets over the entire area and stand there feeling stupid and paranoid for several minutes, and am just about to call myself a fool and go to bed when I hear "splat!"
And sure enough, there's a big wet drop in the middle of the cardboard.
I look up and eventually locate the next drip coming off the elbow of a water pipe -- one that goes up to the sink, of course. So I put the buckets carefully back in the right place and go upstairs and manage to sit myself down on the floor (oh my gods you can't imagine how graceless a process that was, though supremely outdone by the process of getting up again) and open the doors below the sink. I pick up the box of trash bags that's inside the door and the bottom of the box falls out in a wet soggy mess. I clear everything else out and realize that the bottom of the cabinet is now holding over an inch of water and has now warped into a bowl-shape in the middle. The back of the cabinet is also soaked and now moldy as well. The water was only a half-inch or so from the electrical outlet under the sink that the dishwasher plugs into. I freak, grab a nearby towel, and mop out the water as best I can, then start looking for the source of the drip. I do eventually locate it, in a back corner coming off one of the water pipes, in an area too tight to get a bucket under. It's a slightly faster drip than what was coming into the basement because of the "bowl" effect of the cabinet floor bowing down. In the end the only thing I coul do was find something narrow that could be gotten up under the drip but over the hoses on the floor underneath it, but with a larger reservoir attached: I used my antique gravy boat with the spout up under the drip.
The gravy boat, put in place about 2am, was about 3/4 full when I got up to check it at 8:00am. So I've got a six-to-eight hour window in which I need to empty this thing until I can get it fixed.
Part of me wants to call the contractor and give them a bit of a hassle about it. The cabinet is now in rough shape, not to mention the mold, and this is something they should've checked was done right since they picked the plumber they subcontracted to for the work, not I. Of course I suppose *I* should've checked, but I'm not exactly in shape for crawling around on my knees under cabinets, kwim? So of course a big part of me also feels like it's my own fault for not checking this and I shouldn't give the contractors a hard time about it especially after what a huge PITA this job ended up being (none of which was my fault, of course, but that doesn't stop me from feeling somehow bad about the project being difficult for them.) Or I could just call my regular plumber on Monday (or Tuesday, if my plumber happens to take the Monday holiday) and have him out because I *know* he'll get it right, and then I can also get him to look at the upstairs toilet which doesn't seem to want to flush very well at the same time. I think I'd opt immediately for the latter choice if I hadn't just spent a ton of $ getting an electrician out here on Friday to replace the dining room chandelier my parents melted and do a bunch of other minor electrical tasks that I've been saving up for years.
Even if the leak gets fixed, though, it doesn't address the damage now done to the cabinet. It's not visible from the outside and the mold can easily be cleaned up, so part of me wants to just let it go. Am I being stupid? What would you do? I mean, mistakes happen and I've been pretty understanding of the various snafus that have occurred over the course of having this work done (none of which were really the contractor's fault and they've been incredibly good about responding to issues as they arise) and I *LOVE* my new floor and sink and everything, *and* I've been hoping to have them do other work for me in the spring or summer.
I'm just so sick of feeling like I get one thing fixed only to have three other things break, especially when said breaking is so often caused by other people's carelessness. And I feel like I'm never going to get my house back in order at the rate I'm going even WITHOUT stuff going wrong, and this was not what I needed right now. And on top of it all I feel incredibly stupid for not having found this sooner. )-:
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-17 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-17 08:08 pm (UTC)Oh, and yeah, this sucks. Sorry you've got more problems.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-17 08:40 pm (UTC)I think I will call them on Monday to let them know there was a problem and give them an opportunity to offer on their own initiative to make this right before I get really grumpy with them about it.
Thanks for the offer of your wisdom; I'm hoping this remains a small blip at worst in my relationship with these people, because this problem aside they did a very nice job.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-17 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-18 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-17 10:22 pm (UTC)Pat pat pat pat PAT. Everything will go right in time.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-18 01:14 am (UTC)As you know I can totally relate. After my recent car flooding incident I realized that (with the exception of my work cubicle, as P so helpfully pointed out to me last night) every single space that I've inhabited has been flooded in recent memory! My apartment at Elaine's. My mother's basement — SEVERAL times. The bathroom floor. My storage unit. My car. [And if you add in some ancient history, my back room when I worked music retail flooded, too. So that's almost like my cubicle at work.]
I don't know how much more I can stand. I think I'm moving to the desert. At least in the desert if something floods it dries out really fast! Probably very little mold...
no subject
Date: 2008-02-18 02:47 am (UTC)My coworker's special superpower is finding foreign objects in her food.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-19 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-18 01:16 am (UTC)Good for you for catching it, though. Hurray for left-out shopping.
Have a <Hug>
no subject
Date: 2008-02-18 07:24 am (UTC)That, and they'd probably like to know that they need to watch the quality of this plumber's work, too!
Not your problem
Date: 2008-02-18 09:22 pm (UTC)