Old House: A Trying Last Few Weeks

     I love living in an old house.  Thankfully, it is a small old house, built in the 1940's.  I say "thankfully" because old houses have to be repaired from time to time and these last months have been one of those times.

     It all started because the heat and a/c ducts needed to be cleaned.  A man came out to give us a bid on how much it would cost and he said he could not clean them.  He said they needed to be replaced. Not great news, but okay.  They are over 20 years old, so.  Okay.  But--by the way--he had noticed a water leak under the house.

     Well, this turned out to be a major problem due to an old sewage pipe that had worn out.  So, that had to be replaced at quite some cost. But, these repairmen noted, there was still water damage caused by something else.

     This turned out to be a leaking bathtub. A NOT old bathtub because the old bathtub had been replaced only 10 years ago because of water damage.  This tub appeared to have a manufacturers defect and cracked along the underside so that water seeped out into the sub-flooring.

     So--many weeks and many repairman appointments later, some guys came to fix this problem which involved tearing out the whole bathroom (same as 10 years ago), repairing and reinstalling everything.

     Here is the trouble.  This is a small house.  So, we have one bathroom.  Thankfully however, we are town-y types and there are several hotels/motels near, and we were able to get into one without much trouble and not too much cost.

     But, the sub-contracted tile guy did not really know what he was doing and installed the wall tile all slip-shod and so they had to tear it all out which added an extra week to the process.

     To our contractor's credit, he came every day after that and redid everything himself and it all looks very good now.  It was just a long trying road.

I got tired of the perpetual dust, walking on the grit covered paper covering our hallway and kitchen, and trying to stay out of the workmen's way while still being near enough to answer questions.

I am glad that I didn't have little children in the mix, and I'm glad the dog could stay at home, and I'm glad that I could afford to do this.  I felt grateful many times that it was just a bathroom and not a whole house project!

The duct replacement will have to wait.  I am house projected out for the time being!!