And more home repair...

A few weeks ago, after midnight, I took a shower. I take a shower every night. I can not sleep without taking a shower. It is my OCD and I've written about it before. Once in the shower, after wetting my body and hair, I discovered there was no soap. This is a pet peeve of mine because I'm the only one who ever replaces the soap. Seriously? What does my husband use to clean his body when there is no soap? He was already asleep and so I got out of the shower dripping wet and ran into the hallway to get a bar of soap.

After my shower I was walking back and forth from my bedroom to various rooms in the house as I readied for the night. I lock the doors, get a bottle of water, use my eye drops, and kiss Darcy goodnight. It takes forever because most of the time I forget why I came into a room in the first place, go back to my bedroom, remember, and return to that room to complete the activity. At some point in my travels it registered that I was stepping on a wet spot on my carpet right outside my bedroom door by the closet where I had gotten my bar of soap. The first time I stepped there I figured it was because I had gotten the soap while dripping wet from the shower. The second time I stepped there I thought it was awfully wet for just a short amount of time spent standing there. The third time I stepped there I realized the damn dog had to have peed there. I turned on the hall light.and studied the wet spot which was about the size of a coaster. It was perfectly rounded and a bit yellowed, but it looked odd. Knowing the dog had just gone out before Tom went to sleep, I got down on my hands and knees and smelled the spot.

Darcy: "You did what? Why would you do that?"
Me: "Please. We use to hold you up in the air and smell your diapers."
Darcy: "That's weird."

It smelled like water and not urine so I decided it was from me retrieving the bar of soap. I pulled out a towel, soaked it up, and went to bed. The next morning I got up and the spot was wet again and this time a little bigger. I got some carpet cleaner and a wet cloth and threw it at Darcy as I left for church.

Me: "Your dog peed in the hallway. Clean it up."
Darcy: "Yes, I saw that."
Me: "Really? Why didn't you clean it up then?"
Darcy: "I was tired."

The next day the spot was bigger, and I came unhinged. I yelled at the dog. I yelled at Darcy. I yelled at the dog some more. What the hell? He hasn't peed in my house in a long time. I worried he was old. I worried he was incontinent. I worried he was going to die. I yelled at him some more. I kept taking him outside and ordering him to pee. He kept ignoring my hysterics. I got out the cleaner and spent considerable time cleaning the spot. Later that night after my shower I felt the spot again. I ignored it.

Tom: "I think we have a leak."

As soon as he said it I knew he was right. Suddenly the thought that I kept feeling it after a shower hit me. I got out of bed and apologized to the dog. He got a toy and told me all would be forgiven if I chased him around the house. I reminded him it was after midnight and bedtime. Tom, meanwhile, had opened the hall closet and was pulling everything that was on the floor out of it so Elliot went over there to sniff and explore. The closet floor and carpet was wet too.

Me: "It's coming from our shower. How is that possible?"
Tom: "How do you know? It could be coming from the hall bathroom."
Me: "It's our shower because every time I feel this spot is either after you have showered in the morning or I've showered in the night."

He checked under the hall bathroom sink because he never believes a word I say just to rule it out. Everything was dry. We went into our shower and stared at it. Apparently our shower butts up against the hallway wall and closet. We stood there and contemplated where the leak could be. Tom decided it was the shower pan. I agreed because once a long time ago we had had a guy come out to install an insert shower over our existing. The guy refused to do it because he said our pan sucked and needed to be replaced. I had no clue what a pan even was, believed him, and sent him on his way. My husband has never forgiven me for that.

We hate our shower. We hated the bathroom when we moved in, but we made a few changes to it over the years that we are comfortable with it. The shower is our one disappointment. The only thing I love in the shower is a little sitting area that juts out of the corner. I have never sat there, but it makes a really great lift for shaving legs. Other than that the shower is a source of agony. It is tiled on the floor with these little tiles that were filthy when we moved in. No matter what we use they never look clean. The rest of the shower is tiled almost to the ceiling and again are covered with a soap scum sheen that we can't seem to get off no matter what we use. There is also very little water pressure which suddenly happened one day about two years ago. Standing there after midnight staring at our leaky shower, we both got kind of excited about the possibility of having to actually remodel that bad boy.

Tom: "Great. That's gonna cost a pretty penny."
Me: "Yep. But nothing we can do about it now at midnight."

We went to bed. The next morning my husband TOOK A SHOWER. IN THAT SHOWER. What? The leak on my floor got larger. I suggested from now on that we shower in the other bathroom as my carpet was slowly getting ruined. I also suggested drying the spot and the closet with a fan as my carpet was slowly getting ruined.

Elliot: "Which I did not do."
Me: "I know. I said I was sorry. You're a good boy."

Tom in his walk around the neighborhood mentioned the issue to our neighbor Don who happened to put in my carpeting. The two of them then appeared in my house to survey the scene. My neighbor suggested we shower in the other bathroom as the carpet was getting ruined. Uh huh. He also pointed out that the water was coming in through the wall and that we had black mold. Ugh.

They duct taped the shower and filled the bottom and then stood outside the hall closet to see if the spot would become wet. I took photos while they investigated, but got bored after a few minutes of staring at the floor. I left them to their investigation and went off to blog.

Don: "To what?"
Tom: "She writes on the Internet. That's why she's taking our pictures."
Don: "Oh, well, let me pull up my pants."

They were at it over an hour and then Don appeared in the Steelers room to announce that the problem was minor and the cost would be about $25 for the part. I must have looked very disappointed because he laughed and said my face mirrored my husband's. Apparently, secretly, we were both hoping for a remodeling job that would be brought on by need. That wouldn't be the case. The leak was caused by a valve part behind the knob that turns on and off the water and not the pan. Don laughed at the two of us and told us to let him know if we needed him to repair the valve.

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I spent a week staring at this in my bathroom before Tom got around to working on it. He did stop using that shower, but his using the other shower led to replacements of various objects in the second bathroom that he noticed while in there. He hung a hook on the back of the door and replaced the shower head pipe with one that raised the head higher so he could fit under it. He pulled off the butterfly safety decals on the bottom of the tub and replaced them with purple (our bathroom is purple and this one is pink) safety strips which promptly peeled off. Darcy and I just kept quiet.

Eventually he found the time to replace the part in our shower. While in there he found too that the valve that controlled our water pressure had been partially closed. We have no idea how that happened or who turned that valve closed, but I decided not to even try to explain it. We obviously have a ghost. The happy thing is that while I didn't get a new shower I did get a steadier stream, and we didn't have to spend $3,000. It's good to look on the bright side.