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Sep. 12th, 2012 09:53 amOhmygod that damned bathroom.
So we knew the bathroom in the house needed to be redone. It wasn't watertight around the tub, and there was a light in the shower surround area (electrocution, such a great way to start your day!)... so we knocked out the whole wet wall of the bathroom. Our friend J offered to help us out - he knew how to do plumbing and sweat pipes, he said, and we knew he needed some income. It seemed like a win-win for us all. So he went to work on it. Do we need to pull permits for this stuff? I asked innocently. Nah, he said, and I shrugged and went along with it.
Let's skip ahead quite a while, after he's put in the pipes (one of which, in the basement, is still peskily leaking a bit, but he's sure he can get it fixed). We proceed with putting walls back in and Joe's dad goes to work carefully tiling. We get the toilet in (hooray!) and move in, even though probably I was overly aggressive in that timing - we probably should have waited and just moved in when the whole bathroom was done.
The other night, J came over and got things set up so we might be able to use the tub. He thought he might have fixed the leak, too. Exciting!
But. When we turned the water on to the tub, it leaked. A lot. Like, the pipes that went just to the tub were leaking in a serious way. Oh shit. Not only was the leaky pipe in the basement not fixed, but the plumbing to the tub was seriously leaky too.
That plumbing is hidden inside a carefully constructed and lovingly tiled box that takes up the spare foot or so of space at the head of the tub. It's a weird construction but it was how the previous owner had it set up, and we were told that it would be too much of a pain in the neck to move the tub, so we should just reconstruct the box there and make it watertight. (We were told this by at least two people.)
So we had a real professional plumber come today, from Aqua City Plumbers. He spent about 45 minutes looking at the thing and shaking his head. Apparently there's no end of stuff that was not done to code; basically 90% of the plumbing that was added won't pass inspection. He also noted that because of the "box" at the head of the tub, the shower will need a big long neck to reach out to where it's useful... in short, it would have been better to move the tub.
According to the professional plumber, at a wild-ass guess, to have Aqua City do it and get our bathroom done right, we'd need to:
(a) pull all relevant permits (which means a city inspector would be there, and might find all sorts of other problems - say, with the rather aged wiring?)
(b) rip out the bathroom wall again - the one that just got redone - or else rip out the closet wall on the other side to give access to the plumbing
(c) quite possibly rip out the box and move the tub
(d) spend in the neighborhood of $5-6 K on just the plumbing issues... including taking out almost everything we paid J to do.
He seemed to vaguely indicate (but not want to actually say) that we had other options, like getting it done without permits and not to code by some other plumber. But I don't know if we'd want to do that. I feel like we screwed up once by hiring a non-professional and not doing it right, and I don't particularly want to go down that path again.
And then I cried. I'm honestly not even sure what to do next. Do we rip out the closet wall so we can have a plumber come back and try to replumb the whole thing? Do we (sob) rip out the lovingly tiled and built bathroom wall? I'm asking another friend who has contracting experience to give us some advice, so that's something. We'll come up with something, but ... ohmygod so much suck.
So we knew the bathroom in the house needed to be redone. It wasn't watertight around the tub, and there was a light in the shower surround area (electrocution, such a great way to start your day!)... so we knocked out the whole wet wall of the bathroom. Our friend J offered to help us out - he knew how to do plumbing and sweat pipes, he said, and we knew he needed some income. It seemed like a win-win for us all. So he went to work on it. Do we need to pull permits for this stuff? I asked innocently. Nah, he said, and I shrugged and went along with it.
Let's skip ahead quite a while, after he's put in the pipes (one of which, in the basement, is still peskily leaking a bit, but he's sure he can get it fixed). We proceed with putting walls back in and Joe's dad goes to work carefully tiling. We get the toilet in (hooray!) and move in, even though probably I was overly aggressive in that timing - we probably should have waited and just moved in when the whole bathroom was done.
The other night, J came over and got things set up so we might be able to use the tub. He thought he might have fixed the leak, too. Exciting!
But. When we turned the water on to the tub, it leaked. A lot. Like, the pipes that went just to the tub were leaking in a serious way. Oh shit. Not only was the leaky pipe in the basement not fixed, but the plumbing to the tub was seriously leaky too.
That plumbing is hidden inside a carefully constructed and lovingly tiled box that takes up the spare foot or so of space at the head of the tub. It's a weird construction but it was how the previous owner had it set up, and we were told that it would be too much of a pain in the neck to move the tub, so we should just reconstruct the box there and make it watertight. (We were told this by at least two people.)
So we had a real professional plumber come today, from Aqua City Plumbers. He spent about 45 minutes looking at the thing and shaking his head. Apparently there's no end of stuff that was not done to code; basically 90% of the plumbing that was added won't pass inspection. He also noted that because of the "box" at the head of the tub, the shower will need a big long neck to reach out to where it's useful... in short, it would have been better to move the tub.
According to the professional plumber, at a wild-ass guess, to have Aqua City do it and get our bathroom done right, we'd need to:
(a) pull all relevant permits (which means a city inspector would be there, and might find all sorts of other problems - say, with the rather aged wiring?)
(b) rip out the bathroom wall again - the one that just got redone - or else rip out the closet wall on the other side to give access to the plumbing
(c) quite possibly rip out the box and move the tub
(d) spend in the neighborhood of $5-6 K on just the plumbing issues... including taking out almost everything we paid J to do.
He seemed to vaguely indicate (but not want to actually say) that we had other options, like getting it done without permits and not to code by some other plumber. But I don't know if we'd want to do that. I feel like we screwed up once by hiring a non-professional and not doing it right, and I don't particularly want to go down that path again.
And then I cried. I'm honestly not even sure what to do next. Do we rip out the closet wall so we can have a plumber come back and try to replumb the whole thing? Do we (sob) rip out the lovingly tiled and built bathroom wall? I'm asking another friend who has contracting experience to give us some advice, so that's something. We'll come up with something, but ... ohmygod so much suck.