Kitchen, Bathrooms and the Urge to Kill
Whenever we have moved house, we have invariably installed a new kitchen and new bathrooms and Spain was no exception. I may have rebelled against this female fetish in the past (always unsuccessfully) but, although the house is well designed and well built, the kitchen and bathrooms were in a period style that can only be described as 'early Hitler' and so, on this occasion, I wholeheartedly agreed that refurbishment was priority number one.
We visited several kitchen suppliers and eventually decided to place our order with an English company based on the coast, not because they were the cheapest (they were not) or because they had the most innovative design, but because they were honest, devoid of bullshit, practical and fun to deal.
The kitchen was delivered when promised and fitted within the timeframe specified by a craftsman of the highest order and the very few glitches that occurred were dealt with promptly without having a significant impact on the promised completion date and the end result is absolutely fantastic.
Then came the bathrooms………………… and for a lengthy period of time both Sue and I lost the will to live……..this became my daily prayer:
LORD
Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The Courage to change the things I can and the
Wisdom to hide the bodies of the people I may have to kill because they piss me off
It appeared to be a simple project. Take out existing bath, showers, toilets and washbasins. Remove old tiles from walls and floors. Fix new tiles and apply grout. Install new furnishings, produce invoice and move on to the next customer.
We agreed a start date and were assured that the job would be completed in three weeks.
Then the real fun began…………
Removing fixtures and tiles proved to be no problem at all as it required little thought and no particular specialist skills so after two days had elapsed everybody was happy. OK, the amount of dust that had now settled throughout the house did not make Sue deliriously happy but she conceded that dust (her greatest enemy in life) was unavoidable under the circumstances.
We were now ready to commence fitting the new bathrooms. However, whereas the floor and wall tiles were put in place reasonably accurately, the subsequent grouting was grotesque. When I asked the foreman why, instead of uniform sandy coloured grouting to complement the sandy coloured tiles, we were blessed with multiple shades of cream, grey and brown, he merely shrugged his shoulders and explained that the grout came out of a packet and he had never had a problem before. Sue's temper was now approaching the danger zone, but could still be kept from boiling over with the help of a few stiff drinks and soothing words of comfort, both supplied by me.
The new bathroom “stuff” duly arrived, each item carefully wrapped in protective polythene and/or cardboard to prevent damage during transport ……..however, our on-site “friends” were far too macho to unwrap the various items with due care……….their methodology was to use pliers, teeth, bare hands and simple brute force … this subsequently resulted in a badly scratched shower frame, a badly scratched washbasin cabinet and a badly scratched toilet. It was then I decided to call in the management.
Agreement was reached that the damaged items would have to be re-ordered, although I could sense that they thought that I was far too fussy about a few scratches to be considered a real man.
Sue wandered aimlessly through the house with tears in her eyes, in search of a gun. Eventually, many many weeks after the promised three week project period, the guest bathroom was completed.
We were now in week eight, with the main en-suite bathroom still to be fitted …….. some days, during this period of time Sue actually spoke to me, albeit through gritted teeth!
The main bathroom was fitted during week nine. The grouting this time I think was even more horrendous, but apart from that and the fact that the hole that was cut into the tile destined to contain the switch for the spotlight was miles too big and the toilet seat was wobbly, everything was almost perfect!!
Management ordered a new toilet seat, which arrived a week later and that one was equally as wobbly so drastic measures were called for. The supplier was contacted and ordered to come to the house to see for himself that the toilet seat wobbled, although he was convinced that it hadn't been fitted properly, but he would come and sort it out anyway.
So there we were one fine day, me, two crew members, a supervisor and the toilet supplier, pushing and tugging at a toilet seat that wouldn't sit snugly on the toilet but wobbled instead.
The consensus was that we were dealing with a wobbly toilet seat and that a whole new toilet would have to be ordered and installed, probably during week ten or eleven or so……
Sue had packed and gone to the UK for a few days……or so the note informed me.
The new toilet did not wobble, but was badly scratched instead. The crew agreed that it was scratched, but remarked that you could only see the damage either when you bent over or were lying in the bath and that a real man would simply ignore such minor damage and agree to fitting the toilet once and for all. I begged to differ (very conscious of Sue's imminent return and the power of her wrath), so a new toilet was ordered and delivered a week later. They arrived with a completely different toilet than we had originally ordered …… smaller, cheaper and of a different shape, but by now we were so exhausted by the whole episode that we agreed to have it fitted anyway and decided that we would buy a new toilet when everybody was off site and gone for good, using the services of the plumber who helped our kitchen fitter.
Finally, the project was completed and we had two new bathrooms. Sue cleaned the house for two days and pretended that everything was fine. She then ran a bath for the first time in god knows how many weeks and relaxed amongst the bubbles and the foam, admiring the new grouting that had been applied by our kitchen plumber friend.
When completely relaxed and happy with the world once more she took the plug out of the bath and promptly flooded BOTH bathrooms and part of the master bedroom.
I mopped the floors for several hours whilst Sue laughed hysterically and drank a bottle of Brandy.
We had an emergency meeting with Management to find out what they could possibly have done to the plumbing to cause the flooding……did they perhaps drop some rubble in the drains when they were demolishing the old tiles or even when they were putting up the new tiles?
This was deemed impossible, after all they were very tidy and professional workmen, so it must be that our septic tank was full (what a massive coincidence that would be), or there must be some other blockage, such as sanitary towels or paper, whatever could be removed through applying a strong drain cleaner, which they would do the same day. I called the original builder to ask where our septic tank is located and to ascertain whether it could be full, thus causing the flooding. The builder was kind enough to come to the house and I was informed that a full septic tank was absolutely out of the question. Did we have any problems with flooding when using the dishwasher or washing machine? No, only when using the bath or the toilets………which pointed straight to 'project bathrooms' as being the cause of it all.
So….the drain cleaner was applied….. and three baths and three floods later we had yet another management meeting, during which we all agreed that there must be a serious blockage in at least one of the bathroom's drainage pipes and it had to be removed or we had to abandon the house forever.
Sue, by now had permanently glazed eyes and put Valium on her breakfast cereal as a matter of course just to ease the pain of living.
The crew returned and dug a trench that exposed all the drainage pipes leading off both bathrooms, drilled various holes into them, stuck rods and sticks and hose pipes through each hole and into every pipe imaginable and then informed me that the original builder of the house had laid the drainage system the wrong way round and that flooding the bathrooms was therefore inevitable!!!!!!!!! Amazing really that prior to their arrival everything had worked perfectly for the previous ten years.
A different company, a robot and a camera cleared the blockage. I still cry a lot at odd moments and hope that nobody will discover the graves I dug next to the septic tank!!!
by Peter Van de Water
