Soooo....where should I begin...ah yes, that lovely little time table we had. It's shot. Plumbing is a bear people, let me tell you. Especially when you know little to nothing about it. Chuck thought he would solder this little copper pipe to this other little copper pipe and voila...the process would be done in less than an hour and our tub would go back in. Nope. Here's how it went down:
Chuck tried soldering and it wouldn't work.
So he called in reinforcements.
That didn't necessarily work out either. Not for lack of trying. Chuck and Dad worked for about 8 hours last Sunday. That blow torch sure got a workout. There was just a constant leak they couldn't fix no matter how hard they tried. I never would have persevered that long. Finally, on Tuesday, after taking the day off work to focus on the bathroom, Chuck broke down and called the plumber. The plumber looked at our little situation for 2 seconds and declared that the fitting was not working because all the plastic on the inside of the pipes had been melted from all the studious blowtorching. Come to find out all that we needed to do was turn off the water main to the whole house, not just to our bathroom. That way the pipes would have zero water in them thereby allowing the solder to adhere immediately. So, if you ever want to decrease your soldering job from 8 hours to less than one, I highly recommend turning the water main off and not cooking your pipes with a blow torch.
But all was not a waste this past Sunday. Dad and Chuck did get the new lighting fixture hole cut in the wall so that they could install the new (much more glorious, beautiful, attractive, functional) light fixture and not work by what appears to be candle-light any longer.
Finally the moment of truth arrives....the boys put the tub back in place! Do you hear the angels singing? That was me. We now have one functional piece of bathroom equipment in our bathroom again. And no ugly green wall.
Tada!!! Chloe and Chuck are putting plumbers putty around the new faucets. I'm still working on painting the wood to cover up the holes so you can't see the plumbing. We might just get this baby done by June afterall. This (the tub section) was a long and arduous feat of epic proportions....we are telling ourselves its all downhill from here. We'll see about that.
