Bathroom Progress Report: I Know you are Dying to Know

Crawling into bed on Tuesday, I was feeling rather smug about the bathroom progress. I was a full day ahead according to my schedule. Not intentionally, but because, as these things tend to happen, the bathtub drain decided to come loose and threatened to flood the crawl space beneath our house as we were prepping for bed.

The drain was a known problem. We've known since September that the wire we rigged at the last minute for support was not going to hold forever. In the spirit of doing this job right, we'd listed "get the bathtub drain properly supported" as a Wednesday task. But because the tub apparently has a mind of its own... and was impatient... I ended up in the crawl space below our house at 9:30 on Tuesday night.

Yuck!

When we first moved into this house and the plumber spent a full three hours in the crawl space, I had imagined a fairly open area. Sure, he was awfully dirty when he finally surfaced. But he was also a tall guy and since he seemed able to solve a number of our plumbing problems with relative ease (I never heard him cuss, not once!) I had assumed the space was ample for working in.

In September, of course, I was treated to my own up-close view of the crawl space. It's not pretty, and it's certainly NOT roomy. It's not that there are a lot of critters down there. I mean, maybe they are there, but all my cussing scares them away. (It's true -- put a wrench in my hand and I just can't help myself.) But my biggest issue was the space. The further you go, the more it closes in on you. You can't roll over to pick up what you dropped. You can't really reposition yourself, you've got to aim for the right spot to start with in this sort of on-your-back worm crawl. The first time I was down there I was pretty sure I was never going to come up again. We've devised a strategy that works pretty well, however. My son comes down in the hole, too. He stays where he can touch my legs and hands me tools and points an extra flashlight where it is needed. It makes all the difference, that bit of human contact.

So fixing the bathtub drain was not on the list until Wednesday, but we completed it Tuesday night. And since it was basically the only thing I had planned (I expected it to be much more difficult than it was, and my recovery from the experience to take much longer), I was an entire day ahead of schedule.

Now I get to work on Thursday's list, which I attempted to work on all day Wednesday, but barely managed to make a dent. Let's just say that things did not go as planned or as smoothly as I had hoped. Urgh.

I swear... I will have "after" photos to show you by Sunday, even if I have to give up sleep. And very soon I'm going to be inviting people over just to see my pretty bathroom.