November 5, 2007

Tales of Woe

Just thought I'd share some of the fun times we have been having. As you know, we have been working on apartment number 2. I haven't posted a lot about it because we hit a couple of detours and have been in damage control mode.

First, we were working on the bathroom--trying to get the plumbing hooked up and reinstalling the refurbished sink. The vanity was your typical press-wood model with phony wood grain veneer (what is that stuff--contact paper of some kind?) and we wanted to get rid of it but couldn't find a reasonably priced 18-in vanity on short notice, so we decided to work with what he had. (Question: why are the NYC Home Depots and Loews full of HUUUUUGE vanities and bathroom sinks, but have barely anything for small bathrooms? Where are all these huge NYC bathrooms that people are outfitting from these stores?) T added new support pieces, completely rebuilt the base, and added trim; I put on a new door handle, and painted it; and were both shocked at how new and different it looked after we thoroughly cleaned the sink and added a new faucet (all in matching nickel). Once it was done, we were ready to finish the bathroom, the last piece before being finished with the apt. T and our handyman were doing clean-up before installing the vanity and sink when the handyman's foot went through the floor where the vanity was supposed to go and a large portion of the floor gave out and fell through to the parlor below. Won't be finishing the apt today, T told me on the phone after it happened. As you can imagine--i was just thrilled.

The photo shows some of the debris that hit the floor below--the hole wasn't big enough for the vanity (or the handyman) to fall through, but at least we now know why there was a bunch of newspaper from the early 1980s stuffed in the ceiling on the parlor floor.

Since the floor was now open, we made sure the pipes and their connections were solid and then closed up the hole and thought we were out of the woods, and we were--for about 3 days. Once again thinking we were on our last day of work before showing the apt, T was working from home (yes, we have real jobs) while our handyman did some detail work in the space. Sitting at our desk, T was typing to the pleasant sounds of a waterfall when he realized we don't have a waterfall in our home and jumped up wondering where the hell the noise was coming from. Our cat had noticed the sound too and was staring at the source: the dumbwaiter a few feet from the desk. Opening the door, T saw water pouring down the drain pipe that goes from the basement to the fourth floor kitchen of our one occupied rental. Running from dumbwaiter opening to opening, T located a 4-ft long crack in the pipe between the third and fourth floors. Since the previous owner hadn't rented any space for more than 3 yrs, no one knew the pipe had cracked. There hadn't been any leaks when we were checking the house because rust, corrosion, and other drainpipe goo had kept the crack from leaking, but our new tenants' use of the sink had washed away the nastiness. Hoping we wouldn't have to call a plumber to replace the drainpipe, T and our handyman tried epoxy and eletrical tape--$40 worth of epoxy, $20 worth of tape, and 4 hours of standing in the dumbwaiter shaft with hands coated in quick-driving epoxy paste and cramped fingers from wrapping more than four feet of pipe with tape, the leak seemed as bad as ever. So we called the plumber, who came out on a Sat about a week later and replaced the entire length of drain from the basement to the top. The photo shows some of the corrosion on the inside of the pipes that were pulled out.

We're still waiting for the bill, so haven't yet freaked out over the cost.But with at least the plumbing problems fixed, we hope we can finally finish the last details of the second apt.....................stay tuned

Posted by HomeSweetstuy at 8:05 PM | Comments (2)
Categories: house

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