Home Improvement Still Sucks

Remember that project I was griping about a few weeks ago? Well, we’re still working on it, and it still sucks.

So an update from last time: We have a ceiling in there now (just ended up doing the sheetrock myself — it ain’t perfect, but it’ll do). We also painted the walls (after putting up lots of primer) with some mildew resistant paint, and caulked up the top of the shower where it meets the sheet rock, and I installed the new ceiling fan/light that now sucks like crazy and hardly makes any noise.

So fast forward to yesterday. Like the first time I talked about one our home projects here, my parents decided to help out kind of last minute. After we sheetrocked the bathroom, we were going to install new laminate flooring, a new vanity, new counter, and new trim along the floor. This was all stuff we’ve been buying over the years when things were on sale so we didn’t spend all the money at once (as it would’ve killed us otherwise, as we don’t make a living wage). And surprisingly, we got the bulk majority of it done yesterday, and it looks great. The two old layers of linoleum came out fairly easily, the toilet was actually easy to remove and reinstall, the vanity went in fine with some modifications and did things pretty quickly and smoothly. We still need to install trim along the edge to cover up the unfinished edges, but all in all it looks great, and we were basically done with the flooring, vanity, toilet reinstall, and countertop/sink in a few hours (it’s not a real big bathroom).

My dad helped me out with the flooring and vanity and such, and it was my job after he left to get the plumbing for the sink all hooked back up. And any of you with older homes (and mine’s really not all that old in the grand scheme of things) know that the plumbing can be a nightmare. I just bought new supply lines and valves for the incoming water as the old ones were pretty trashed (and it’s far easier to work with the flexible lines) and the valves didn’t shut off all the way (we had to turn off the water to the house while we did this).

Well, hooking up the supply lines was nice and easy, but hooking up the drain became a nightmare. It started with the fact that the drain line didn’t even remotely line up with the new sink/countertop. So we could straighten it out, but it still was about 6 inches below where the drain was, and it was at and odd-ball angle )just slight off center, making it harder to reach). So I went to Home Depot, got some flexible drain line tightened that into the U-shaped trap. Then I tried to attached the trap to the drain line in the wall, and it would not attached. The threaded nut on the wall drain just didn’t want to thread onto the trap when there was any sort of o-ring or gasket in there, Naturally, removing that o-ring makes it easy to attach, but makes it leak like crazy, so it has to be on there. And naturally, I can’t get the thing compressed together so it’ll thread when both gaskets are on there. And I can barely get a grip on the nut as it’s obviously been grapped with some channel locks pliers many times and the edges are shredded and sharp, so my hands are now all cut up.

So the bathroom sink is still turned off. I’m just going to have to see if there’s something else I can do, short of removing the pipe connected to the wall drain (as it’s a big meaty thing that’s a pain to remove, and probably hard to find. But if I can’t get the thing to connect, I’ll have to replace that as well, which will mean I’ll have replace pretty much all the replacable plumbing in the sink.

Ugh….

I only wish the folks at Searing were open at times where I could actually make it to their store, as they’re immensely more helpful that the folks at the big orange/blue stores.

But most of all, I wish I could actually just enjoy my evenings after work, but instead I’m up late doing home improvement stuff (I was trying to get that damn drain to work for three hours last night).

So let it be heard right now: Sheetrock sucks, plumbing sucks (if you’re using old plumbing — it’s easier on newer stuff) and home improvement as a whole pretty much sucks.