Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Splish, splash, ever seen a tape measure??!

So, the plumbers in the fancy trucks came. It was to be a two-day gig, and unfortunately, Handyman had to work on day one. This is never a good sign. But I try really hard to be knowledgeable and impressively determined. I learn lingo, I read articles. I am not the nit-wit wife of old.

I greet them. I pop in and out of the kitchen/laundry area multiple times, to be accessible. I chit-chat about football. Trying to make them feel comfortable talking to me. Hoping they will realize I am not clueless in this realm-of-man-skills.

Handyman leaves me a scale drawing of our laundry room, to present to the skilled craftsmen. I do this. I say, "Here is a scale drawing of the layout for this space." They say, "Okay. Thanks." I leave them to their devices while I go educate my children.

They work diligently all day. At one point, I go out to the garage refrigerator to get milk. As I turn to come back in, I glance up and see one of them, through the ceiling, in the room above the garage. It strikes me as odd for some reason...but I am in a hurry, so I let it go.

I remind them a couple of times that Handyman will be here tomorrow. If there is anything they are unsure about, he will be here all day. They never ask me one question, all day.

When they are ready to leave, they show me where the trap for my upstairs shower is now positioned, right in the exact geometric center of my new kitchen ceiling. Which should be fine, except, the "trap", the curvy little bit of pvc pipe is hanging down below the level of the main support beam across the kitchen.

We are not putting up drywall on our ceiling. We are doing a wood panel that will be painted white. That means there is no, I repeat, NO extra space to hide anything. ("WHAT?!" I think.)

Nonchalantly I say, "What is going on there?" mustering every bit of self-control I possess. They say, "Oh, we had to do that to get the slope for the run of the pipe. You can just box it in."

(One of my New Year's resolutions is to stop swearing. I don't know why I derive pleasure from swearing--usually to get a laugh...This is when I am really bummed that I can't just let it rip!)

So what they are suggesting, is that in my new kitchen, in the exact center of the broad expanse of glorious, flat ceiling--right next to the beautifully boxed-in, painted white beam, there will be a little bitty box hanging out of the ceiling. And my guests will inevitably say, "What is that?" and I will respond, with bliss--"Oh, that's just the trap to our shower. You know, where the hair clogs hang up." And we will all smile and go on eating artichoke and goat cheese s'mores.

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" my mind shrieks! The equestrian in me has been trained not to shriek unnecessarily, so I smile vaguely and say, "He's not going to go for that."

They imply that he's going to have to, and I think, "You do not know Handyman."

I say, "Well, you guys can all work it out tomorrow. Bye." And they leave for the night.

When Handyman gets home, he is fuming before his coat hits the chair. He sees the trap, like an owl sees a mouse. He can't believe it. And then he mentions to me that they also fell through the garage ceiling--twice! Remember when I said I could see him above the garage? I was in such a hurry, it didn't register that I was looking through a hole in the ceiling drywall big enough to pass a basketball! And that wasn't the only one!

I was completely shocked that they would not have mentioned this to me! I know stupid mistakes happen. I make them all the time. But I would never, not for one minute, not mention to my client that I did something really, really ridiculously dumb!

Then he took me out to my new laundry area. I actually like doing laundry. I can't wait to have a laundry area that is not in my kitchen. I have lots of pictures of pretty laundry areas. I am looking forward to my new, completely-new, laundry area. He showed me where they had placed the washer hose box, about a foot and a half away from where the washer will be situated...behind the dryer actually. So much for the scale-drawing.

He tried to settle this in his mind. It was all done with PEX. We have never had plumbing done with PEX. So we re-read our plumbing book and it did say that to "old plumbers" PEX looks messy. So we tried to decide if these were actually just problems with how it looked--because once that drywall goes on, you won't be looking at your plumbing anymore :)--or were these actual issues with the job?

We hate to be complainers, don't like to cause trouble. These guys came highly-recommended. Maybe we were just too P-I-C-K-Y...then we glanced up, above our kitchen island, at our new conversation piece: the trap.

Handyman reached for the phone, at 8pm on a weeknight.

"I'm calling the boss," he said.

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