It was another "fun filled" weekend of home repairs not going as planned in the Cosmic Cat household. But you knew that already... because if things had gone smoothly I wouldn't be writing a blog post bitching about it.
It was a simple enough repair - fix a leaky tub faucet. It doesn't get much more mundane than that. Except when you get your vintage 1965 plumbing halfway taken apart and find out that it is a not a standard size. After going to the big hardware store that has every tool known to man, PDM found out that they no longer make the tool he needs in the size he needs. That scuttled the repair.
We (mostly PDM) are still fixing the damaged wallboard in the half bath. This was the project that I started in October, and was going to take two weekends to complete. Yeah, right. We're coming up on four months and those walls are still not ready to paint.
Old houses tend to be more solidly built than newer ones. But the tradeoff is that more stuff will fail due to age, and fixing it can be terribly frustrating. The non-standard size thing crops up all over the house - not just the plumbing. The new front door was also a special order due to a non-standard opening.
Some days we like our home better than others...
14 comments:
I thought that's why the crescent wrench was invented?
Too bad I don't live closer... we've acquired a lot of things over the years, and I'm almost certain we could have found something that would've worked.
The nut that needed removal is buried in the wall, so you need an extender thingy with a hole that the stem will fit through. Or something like that. Plumbing repair is definitely not my bag!
One word...
hacksaw.
We're screwed.
My sympathies. Having lived in an old house (100 years or so) I completely understand. Here are some of the things I learned:
1. Everything takes longer and costs more than you expect.
2. No matter what tools you have, they're never the right ones (as you found out).
3. The amount of time and money you have to spend increases exponentially as the house ages.
The year before I sold my house, I had to replace the furnace, the AC compressor and the washing machine. Yes, there are definitely those times when they joys of home ownership don't seem quite so obvious.
Yep - home ownership and the repairs/upkeep it takes to fix or just keep any place operating reasonably well can take a whole lot of elbow grease,time and money! But, I'll still opt for my old house here any day of the week. It is now 105 years old - built by my grandparents -and though it does have its issues, it also has something for me that no other house can have - memories and it's "home."
I feel your pain fermicat!
everything about us - uh - our home is "Non-Standard" and it's not really that old. It's just eccentric.
Older homes are so much cooler than newer homes. I just hope you can appreciate the character when things go wrong.
I love your use of "extender thingy."
"Having lived in an old house (100 years or so)..."
Damn TWG, I would have never pegged you to be that old... ;P
Is it just the plumbing, or is 1965 considered to be an old house in Atlanta?
(It is in Nashville, and I suspect in many other Southern cities as well.)
My 107-year-old house has stuff from ALL vintages...and none of it is plumb or level. Makes any home repair a thing of calculus and geometry. Both of which I suck at.
Good luck gittin' it done!
We lived in a historic home (from the late 1890's) and everything was a labor of love. I miss having an older home even though I remember times like this. I'd still rather have them then living in a small little place with no past.
My husband makes his own tools a lot. Maybe PDM could do something like that?
We did renovations this weekend and now everything's a wreck. It'll take two weeks to finish these ceilings and the repainting. Blargh. I hate living like this.
TWG - what LL said. :P
jeni - that's awesome. In grad school, I rented the house next door to Dad and stepmom. Her parents built it, and it was loaded with character. Great house. All gone now, along with every damn rock and tree...
dianne - our house isn't old enough to be considered eccentric. Hell, it is only a year older than me and I'm not eccentric. At least not yet.
kat - "extender thingy" is a highly technical term. I have a million of 'em. (Technical terms, not extender thingies.)
dr s - 1965 would be medium old. Houses closer to the heart of Atlanta are generally older, but in suburbia most houses are post-WWII.
tiff - 107?!? No wonder you've had to do so much since you moved in!
beth - That old farmhouse sounds cool. We're not really "make the tools yourself" people, because we lack the tools for toolmaking. We do have some friends who do construction who are willing to help us out and loan us the occasional tool. I agree that living through the project involves major suckage.
I'm envious of your 1965 plumbing, Fermi. My apartment is in a 19th century building. I came home the other night, and it was raining in my bathroom. It wasn't the pipes that were the problem - those were taken care of last year. No, this time it was the cracks in the floor that was sending the deluge into my life.
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