(no subject)
Jan. 6th, 2005 11:53 pmSo, I don't know if I mentioned this, but the ceiling under our bathroom has been leaking anytime someone takes a shower. For a long time it only leaked if you splashed the water on the faucet or handles -- they weren't caulked properly. But a week or two before Christmas the leaking problem suddenly got worse. So I got off my butt and caulked the fixtures, like the plumber told me months ago I needed to do, but this didn't fix the problem. I determined this week that the problem is that the caulk sealing the edges of the tub has pulled away from the wall and needs to be dug out and replaced.
(If you're wondering about the technical details here -- the tub does not have real tile. We've got one of those vinyl shower surround things that looks like tile if you squint your eyes and don't look real close. There's silicon caulk around the rim of the tub.)
Re-caulking is not that difficult, but it is somewhat time-consuming and will look better if done by someone who knows what they're doing. I called around some handyman-type places and have a place booked to come in and do it for us next Tuesday; it was inexpensive enough that I prefered to hire it done rather than trying to do it myself. In the meantime, we figured, Ed and I would shower at the health club. This is, in fact, where I take most of my showers, since unlike my house, the health club is equipped with a well-staffed childcare facility. If I try to shower at home alone with the kids and Kiera is in the bathroom, she tries to climb in with me, even if she's fully dressed. If she's not in the bathroom, well, goodness only knows what she'll get into unsupervised. Fifteen-month-olds can wreak a truly amazing quantity of havoc in 15 minutes.
(You know, it occurs to me that I forgot to mention that we have only one bathroom. It's also incredibly small.)
Anyway, the "shower at the health club" plan would've worked great except that yesterday Molly was diagnosed with conjunctivitis, which is highly contagious, and she can't go to any sort of preschool or childcare or play date or anything, really, until she's been symptom-free for 24 hours. So I didn't get to go today.
So this evening I decided to take a bath. (It's not hard to keep the water from splashing up against the leaky caulk when you're bathing; it's just showers that are off limits.) I wanted to do it BEFORE putting Kiera to bed because lately, Kiera has not been at ALL good about the whole "staying asleep" part of being in bed. Molly was having her snack, so I ran up, got a towel and my bathrobe, and started the water running. Just as I was getting into the tub, someone swung open the bathroom door. It was Molly! She had to pee. That would have been fine, except that she was followed by Kiera, who wanted to climb into the tub with me, fully dressed. I handled this really well, by yelling at both kids, even though Molly hadn't done anything wrong (it's not like she had anywhere else she could pee) and Kiera didn't really understand that Mama didn't want her company in the bathtub. Ed was downstairs washing dishes so I started washing my hair, trying to go as fast as I could so that I could get done and out before Kiera became more insistent about climbing in.
There's a knack to taking efficient baths. I used to be able to do it: when my family lived in England, our shower leaked if anyone who weighed more than 40 pounds stood in it. (It wasn't a very useful shower.) (British plumbing in general is not exactly in the global top ten.) We did have a bath tub and since I was 13 years old and pretty close to my adult size, I took baths, and got to be very efficient at it. It's been a while, though, and I found it both inefficient and unpleasant. There are people who are really into baths. I am not. I much prefer showers. I might be a bigger fan of baths if I had one of those huge tubs with jets, but my entire bathroom is smaller than some of the bathtubs I've seen.
Anyway, Ed came up, snagged Kiera, chased Molly out of the bathroom, and left me to it. I put conditioner in my hair and turned on the shower sprayer thingie to rinse the conditioner out, since I didn't think the pitcher I was using to rinse out the shampoo was going to do the trick.
And I realized I was running out of hot water.
Gahhhhhhhhhhhh.
I am clean, dry, and have warmed up now.
The re-caulking had better give me a functional shower again.
(If you're wondering about the technical details here -- the tub does not have real tile. We've got one of those vinyl shower surround things that looks like tile if you squint your eyes and don't look real close. There's silicon caulk around the rim of the tub.)
Re-caulking is not that difficult, but it is somewhat time-consuming and will look better if done by someone who knows what they're doing. I called around some handyman-type places and have a place booked to come in and do it for us next Tuesday; it was inexpensive enough that I prefered to hire it done rather than trying to do it myself. In the meantime, we figured, Ed and I would shower at the health club. This is, in fact, where I take most of my showers, since unlike my house, the health club is equipped with a well-staffed childcare facility. If I try to shower at home alone with the kids and Kiera is in the bathroom, she tries to climb in with me, even if she's fully dressed. If she's not in the bathroom, well, goodness only knows what she'll get into unsupervised. Fifteen-month-olds can wreak a truly amazing quantity of havoc in 15 minutes.
(You know, it occurs to me that I forgot to mention that we have only one bathroom. It's also incredibly small.)
Anyway, the "shower at the health club" plan would've worked great except that yesterday Molly was diagnosed with conjunctivitis, which is highly contagious, and she can't go to any sort of preschool or childcare or play date or anything, really, until she's been symptom-free for 24 hours. So I didn't get to go today.
So this evening I decided to take a bath. (It's not hard to keep the water from splashing up against the leaky caulk when you're bathing; it's just showers that are off limits.) I wanted to do it BEFORE putting Kiera to bed because lately, Kiera has not been at ALL good about the whole "staying asleep" part of being in bed. Molly was having her snack, so I ran up, got a towel and my bathrobe, and started the water running. Just as I was getting into the tub, someone swung open the bathroom door. It was Molly! She had to pee. That would have been fine, except that she was followed by Kiera, who wanted to climb into the tub with me, fully dressed. I handled this really well, by yelling at both kids, even though Molly hadn't done anything wrong (it's not like she had anywhere else she could pee) and Kiera didn't really understand that Mama didn't want her company in the bathtub. Ed was downstairs washing dishes so I started washing my hair, trying to go as fast as I could so that I could get done and out before Kiera became more insistent about climbing in.
There's a knack to taking efficient baths. I used to be able to do it: when my family lived in England, our shower leaked if anyone who weighed more than 40 pounds stood in it. (It wasn't a very useful shower.) (British plumbing in general is not exactly in the global top ten.) We did have a bath tub and since I was 13 years old and pretty close to my adult size, I took baths, and got to be very efficient at it. It's been a while, though, and I found it both inefficient and unpleasant. There are people who are really into baths. I am not. I much prefer showers. I might be a bigger fan of baths if I had one of those huge tubs with jets, but my entire bathroom is smaller than some of the bathtubs I've seen.
Anyway, Ed came up, snagged Kiera, chased Molly out of the bathroom, and left me to it. I put conditioner in my hair and turned on the shower sprayer thingie to rinse the conditioner out, since I didn't think the pitcher I was using to rinse out the shampoo was going to do the trick.
And I realized I was running out of hot water.
Gahhhhhhhhhhhh.
I am clean, dry, and have warmed up now.
The re-caulking had better give me a functional shower again.