Sunday Night: probably the best time for cock, er... caulk

I am currently waiting for Jason the plumber to arrive. It's almost 8pm on a Sunday night, which, as anyone could tell you, is absolutely the best time to have a plumbing emergency.

Maybe he'll come fix my leak...

We live in a condo conversion, which is an apartment building that has been converted into condos (which basically just means you can buy them instead of renting, and that they had minor internal cosmetic work done). I do not recommend this for several reasons, but it was what we could afford when we were buying, and we've been here almost four years (this June), and only recently have we begun having problems. There are ten units, though, and several of the others have had major issues in the last four years since the conversion (we bought directly from the developer), so I think we've just been lucky up to this point.

Saturday morning I woke up and found the bathroom rug soaking wet. I thought maybe TH had spilled a glass of water or something (he got home after I went to bed on Friday), but when he woke up he told me that hadn't happened.

Imagine a puddle... see the damaged baseboard?

I cleaned it up and went to make coffee, where I found another strange wet mess on the kitchen counter, against the wall that backs up to the bathroom - this mess seemed to have come from above, from behind the cabinets, so I cleaned that up, too, and figured I as just having a strange day. I looked for water damage and couldn't find any. After I took a shower, the kitchen mess seemed to start coming back (just a tiny shadow), so we thought it must have something to do with the shower. After inspecting, we noticed the caulk around the bathtub that meets up to the shower walls (all fiberglass, I believe) was all cracked and that there seemed to be water behind it, so we figured we would just recaulk and that would solve our problems.

Is it just me, or does this look dirty?

[Side note: when we woke up this morning, I was laying there brainstorming about some fan fiction I intend to write, actually plotting out some lemons in my head, and TH turned to me and said, "Well, I'd better get up and grab my caulk." This took me awhile to figure out, since I was thinking about his cock (even before he mentioned it), and turned out to be a joke he had been planning since the previous night. I love my husband. :-)]

This morning, we headed out to Home Depot and got some silicone caulk and a caulking gun (I almost just wrote "a gun," and then thought better of it :-)), and resolved to recaulk this evening (TH had a matinee today, so he had to head out shortly after the Home Depot trip). A friend of ours then called and invited TH to a basketball game this evening, which I encouraged him to accept, since he rarely gets a chance to go to games and he always wants to. So, since he was going to be gone, I got all grrl-power and decided to recaulk myself.

I like that this post is starting to sound as though I caused the problem that necessitated the soon-to-arrive plumber. That's not the case. It was actually all thanks to my mad detective skillz.

So, first step, ladies? You know this one: I read the instructions on the caulk. I've never caulked before (there is a homonym with which I am very familiar, of course - see above side note), so the instructions were quite important to me. The first thing they say to do is to clean the area to be caulked and make sure it's dry. Great, I can do that. So I took my roll of paper towels (I know they're bad, I'm more lazy than I am environmentally conscious these days), and went to sop up the water. I went through an ass ton of them before I realized the water was running from somewhere. Somewhere, seemingly, in the wall. Shit. This was worse than we had expected. TH came home between matinee and game, and I explained the situation to him. He inspected, got his tools (you know how men are), removed the faucet handle, and found a small, spurting leak in the shower wall. Fan-fucking-tastic. Then he had to leave for the game. So I called a plumber, and here we are.

The best pic I could get. Makes you wet, and not in a good way.

The towel TH stuffed in to help until the plumber arrived. It was absolutely saturated by the time Jason got here.

The plumber, Jason, just arrived and is outside shutting off water to the building right now (we don't have individual shut-offs, so I get to inconvenience everyone. It's super). My initial quote is about $600, but he might need to cut through the sheet rock (which he doesn't replace, by the way, so if he has to cut through it, we will then have a big hole in the wall until we can fix it or get it fixed some other day), and if he has to do that, the price will change (I assume it goes UP).

Breaking news (pun intended): Jason is currently cutting through the sheet rock. I just helped him move stuff out of the way. I'm getting out the Mastercard.

There's a place in France, where the naked ladies dance...

This fucking sucks, y'all. TH just got paid for his show today (since it is now closed), the check is on the fucking counter right now, and I really thought we would be able to use the money to pay for trips this summer (one of my cousins is getting married in California this August, it will be my 30th birthday in July, and, of course, FOOOOORRRKKKSS in October), and it looks like the plumber will cost basically exactly what TH got paid. Which: I'm glad we have the money to cover it, don't get me wrong, this is necessary and an emergency and all; but: FUUHUHUHUUUUUCK! I just want something to go our way for once! I know we're really lucky, I know there are folks worse off than us, but godDAMmit! Fuck the Hell off, Universe! Go pick on other people! How about those bitches at work who think they're better than everyone else, or how about fucking Spencer and Heidi from The Hills??! Huh? Go pick on them! They're assholes! We are nice people! Despite how much I'm swearing in this post and wishing ill on others!

*Le sigh*

TH says (by e-mail from the Blazer game) that it's good we found the leak now, and he's right, of course. It would undoubtedly be worse (and more expensive) if the damage had continued, unfettered, in our wall. And I should probably think of it as a good thing that we got the money today that will cover the expense, and that I have room on the Mastercard (even after paying for my Forks room) to pay tonight so we don't have to use the bank account immediately, and that my student loans are still in forbearance (from when TH's unemployment benefits ran out - I still have about 3 months of forbearance I can do on one, and 6-9 months on the other), and that we have a roof over our heads and food to eat.

********

OK, ladies, Jason just left (it is now 3 hours since I began this post). It cost about as much as the original quote, so that's good. However, my bathroom is in a state, and I'm exhausted.

That cabinet used to be on the wall where we now have the hole. Upgrade!

The faucet:

Before

After!

Wet sheet rock:

Tasty! It feels damp to the touch, like my underroos after reading Master of the Universe... only this wasn't as fun.

The reason for the leak? Two pipes were not soldered together at their joining, one was just stuck into the other and, I guess, held together by a wish and a prayer? This place is a dump.

What the pipe should look like...

.
...but, instead...

...it slips right out.

But it's our dump.

So, plumbing. What an adventure. Fail.

On a MUCH happier note, I had 12 hits today! That's the most ever!! Hi, everyone! Or whoever you are who came back 12 times! And I got comments (thanks TC and Lisa) from other bloggers I follow, which was SUPER exciting! And now I have pipes that work, if not a solid wall behind my shower. You can't have everything.

Have a great week, everyone. I wish good plumbing unto you, in every sense of the word.