The main bathroom of my house has had issues for months. I had a window taken out of the shower in September, which left a giant wood-framed gap in the interior wall. Then about a month later I discovered a leaky pipe. I had a plumber take a look, and he was able to confidently identify the part of the shower pipe that was leaking. He quoted me a price of $700 to make the repair, so I thanked him for his time and have been showering in the basement ever since.

With my tax refund and home refinance money, I am finally ready to fix the bathroom. Still, the $700 plumbing repair was a bit out of my budget, so I asked my very handy uncle if he could help me out with that part of the project. Because he is a glutton for punishment, he said yes.

I spent a few nights last week chiseling tile off the walls and inhaling toxic grout/cement dust in preparation for my uncle’s arrival. When he got to the house, I took him into the bathroom and explained to him where the plumber said the leak most likely was. He carefully cut a small section out of the drywall and we ran the water to see if we could identify the leak. Nothing. So then he removed a whole panel of drywall to expose the entire pipe and again we ran water. Still nothing.

It turns out, I do not have a leaky pipe. In fact, all I evidently needed to do was re-caulk the bathtub. Pity, since instead of that simple fix, I did this:

In some ways, the fact that I didn’t have to do a major plumbing repair is good news. But in other ways, like the ways involving wasting the most beautiful Saturday we’ve had in months laboring in a 3×5 foot bathroom, and creating (then patching) unnecessary holes in the wall, and driving to various hardware stores with my uncle, who prides himself on knowing many gas and time saving “short cuts”, this development can pretty much be classified as rage-inducing waste of time.

Tags: bathroom remodel, home improvement sucks