House 0, Wesley 1

I finished the wall today. The room is painted, the hole is gone, the leak is fixed. If I were to grade myself, I'd give myself a B for "better than a rotten hole in the wall." The piece of drywall I put in wasn't exactly a seamless work of art. In hindsight, I probably could have spent more time pushing in the left side where the new stud was put in. There is a hump, some waves, and a few spots where the mud flaked off. But with the new toilet shelves in place, you can't even tell. If it weren't for having to stop the leak, the duct tape would have been just as good anyway. The repair ended up costing probably a little over a hundred, not counting the $50 I paid the plumber to show me how to change a shower cartridge.
And as I bring this blog to a close, I can't help but think forward to my next project. It's probably going to be changing out the plumbing and lighting on my koi pond. The last time I attempted major work to it, I lost my largest catfish (Goliath) and 3 of the fatties.

I feel like Pigpen

A lot of good taking a picture of yourself wearing a dust mask does when you shoot with flash into a mirror... I started sanding tonight, and discovered why people who do this for a living make so much money doing it. It's not easy. Or fun. And I think my lungs are ready to be painted. But considering this wall used to be rotting from within every time I took a shower or flushed the toilet, a layer of drywall dust over my eyes isn't that bad.
The two-gallon bucket of "low-dust" mud is turning into 10,000 square feet of dust in a 100 square foot bathroom. Whose idea was it to paint the window shut? And how long has the air vent been clogged up? It's like five years' worth of shortcuts are ganging up on me for this one leak.
But I will emerge victorious. I will climb to the top of the mountain and dig my way back down. I am a man, and men get things done come hell or high water. Not to mention we plan on buying a cabinet to hide most of the mountain when I'm done. That's not important. What is important is that I did it myself, and there's not a cabinet in the world that will be able to hide that fact. No, wait....
Make sure that you always have a sander, dust mask, eye protection, and a 12-ounce bottle of elbow joint lubricant when you perform this task.

Moving right along

Here's another good news, bad news deal for you. Everything seems to be going ok with the repairs. That's the good news. The bad news is that it's boring to read about. What kind of a story is it where everything works out? Oh well. I can't help you there. You're going to have to put a hole in your own drain pipe if you want a story worth telling. Go ahead, do it. I'll wait right here....
Now that you've got your leak started, I'll let you know how to fix yours. As luck would have it, the leak WAS on the lower part of the drain pipe, accessible from below without having to go into the ceiling. There was a gouge in it when it was installed, so I'd like to meet the guy who put it in knowing it would leak. I was able to stop it with one glob of plumbing epoxy. Leaky faucet and leaky drain? I'm two for two.
As far as the hole in the wall, it's now about 6 feet long and 14 inches wide. And being that I'm not the world's best drywall hanger, I decided to screw some 2x4s into the studs and hang them from these instead of trying to cut dead center on the studline (my father's idea.) After about a hundred cuts on a piece of drywall, I was able to make it fit into place. The only thing I wish I had done was to pay closer attention to the stud I was attaching. It was about a quarter inch further in on the lower right side, so I've got a pretty large puttying and sanding job ahead of me. I'm on my 3rd layer of drywall mud and still not quite there. It'll come.
My wife is choosing a green ash color (I have no idea what that looks like), so I won't have to look at the urine yellow she chose when we moved in (I do know what that looks like).
On a side note, I've actually made almost 5 whole dollars from this blog since I started putting ads on it. That automatically makes me better than you at both home repair and as a construction business mogul.

Downtime

When I started this blog, I did it as a joke to poke fun at the guaranteed retardation that would come from me trying to fix a relatively complicated problem in my house. There has not been a single time (and I'm as serious as the day is long when I say not once) where something I have either fixed or put together hasn't gone wrong. The closest I came was when I put a gun cabinet together last Christmas. I specifically remember getting through and saying OUT LOUD, "I can't believe that I put this entire thing together with no problems." Then I opened the door and leaned to my left to pick up a rifle and the whole thing fell forward, tearing the joint screws out through the inside paneling. Since I had already burned the box it came in (I burn 95% of the cardboard that comes into my house so I don't have to break it down), so I couldn't take it back to Bass Pro and say it was broken when I bought it. But it worked out and you can only see the damage when you open it.
Most recently, after experiencing a plumber's high of fixing a leaky faucet, I turned my attention to the garage where I found an old shelf that was left here when we bought the house. I reasoned that the shelf probably wouldn't need to be screwed into a stud because I didn't anticipate putting anything heavy on it. Ok, I admit it. The 9-volt that is used in my stud finder was dead, and apparently that battery already came from my smoke detector (Shopping list: 9-volt battery and fire extinguisher). Anywho, I screwed it in and put a few things on it to clean up my work bench. A few minutes later, it didn't look quite even enough, so I BARELY touched it to test its strength when it fell, dumping everything on me. Luckily my knock test proved right and I found a stud on my next try. I used a level and it still isn't even though. Maybe my entire house is leaning. Or the world is crooked. It can't be the shelf.
So I as started this blog and sent a joke text page to some people I knew, I started getting common responses. No one I know is good at home repair, and I mean no one. Instead of the expected harassment and berating, I was getting comments of understanding and support. How is that possible? Ask anyone and you'll likely find that their father can build anything with anything. Mine is a contractor and I can't build a bookshelf or a birdhouse. I mentioned to him the other day that I should have paid attention more when he built stuff as I grew up, and he quickly pointed out that I avoided work as often as possible when I was younger. So here I am, years later, asking him questions about things that he learned when he was probably 7. Maybe I could have used some sort of college shop class. I'd certainly use it more than Coaching Men's Basketball (an actual elective on my transcript) or Mass Comm Law. There's not a whole lot use knowing by heart the ruling of Cohen v. Cowles as it pertains to promissory estoppel when I've got a stopped up terlet. Plumbing 101, anyone?

A little bit o' progress

If you were hoping that by now I'd have my house down to one level, I'm sorry to disappoint you. No, I haven't fixed the problem, but I did stop the shower faucet from leaking, and that makes me a home improvement professional. Besides, progress is progress, and I'll share with you what I learned. Why learn from your own mistakes when you can learn from mine?
As I mentioned before, I assumed my problem was a leaky tub drain that normally wouldn't be a problem had it not been for my perpetual leaky shower faucet. Not a fast drip, a slow pour. It's amazing what you can put up with for so long for the sole reason of not knowing how to fix it.
So I had a plumber come over. More of a friend of a friend who used to plumb or simply likes plums. (Actually a laid-off plumber.) I knew I was in trouble when he borrowed my screw driver to remove the shower handle. His leatherman multi-tool was stripping the screw. Apparently on the other side of the shower handle is a long cartridge that forms the inside guts of a shower faucet. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to remove it. About 15 minutes into pulling and prying on the faucet, he finally said he'd have to get back with me. Still fine with me. I'm as calm as a Hindu cow. Until he left and turned the water back on. Now my slow pour is a fast pour. I've had less water pressure at a cheap hotel. I turned the water back off for the night, brushed my teeth with bottled water and used every toilet in the house for its precious final flush.
8:00 a.m. Lowes opened. I spent about a half hour on the plumbing aisle looking for some sort of cartridge pulling tool before asking a guy there if he'd heard of one. He hadn't. But he did feel my pain for the game the day before. (Mental note: don't wear Titans hat after playoff elimination.) So I got the cartridge I needed anyway and brought it home. They come with directions. $19 bucks for a piece that would fix a drip I'd had for probably 2 years. Nice.
The new cartridge came with an adapter to help turn the piece and dislodge it from the faucet. In the photo of them side by side, you can see the problem in the one on the right. Just a worn out rubber gasket. After I pulled it out, all I had to do was fish out the pieces of rubber with a bent coat hanger (my own invention, patent pending), and put the new one in. It slid right in. No drip. And to top it off, there is no drip down the drain unless the water is on. One step closer. Now I can start planning to destroy the wall.

Soft wall?

Let me start off by saying that I have less handyman experience than my 2-year-old daughter. When it comes to home repair, I'm about as useless as a they come. So when I get the chance to hang a picture or a light fixture, I get pretty excited. Give me a chance to make some loud power tool noises and I'm in heaven. The problem is, I still haven't finished putting together my table saw. But I digress.
We live in a pretty big house for a family of three. When something goes wrong, it's easy to "move" into another area. The heat goes out? We can go upstairs for that unit. Toilet not stopping? Turn the water off and use another bathroom. A drain leaks upstairs for years into a wall and rots it from the inside out? Well, I may get to make some sweet power tool noise after all.

It all started with a towel rack hung innocently enough in my wife's downstairs bathroom. I almost never got a screw in the wall where I wanted it, so I had to choose a slightly off-center spot above the toilet. As I would later find out, the reason was because of a pvc drain. Who knew? Anyway, we've had a leak coming from the upstairs shower faucet for about a year. And a half. Or two. Whatever. We use our fair share of water. A few days ago, the towel rack fell from the wall. The screws came out and the wall was soft. I easily pulled the drywall back and exposed the pvc pipe where I could see water slowly draining down the outside of the pipe. Not good. From floor to ceiling, soft.
My wife comes home and I break it to her. "I've got good news and bad. The good news is that you get to pick any color you want for your new bathroom." She wasn't amused. I had to hide the fact that I'm actually excited about getting to rip my wall apart. Come on, when will I ever get to do this again? I can't mess it up any worse than it is now, and if I have to hire someone to fix my mistake, I'd have had to hire someone anyway. It's a lose-lose situation in which I'm the winner!
So here's the plan. I've got an actual plumber coming over this weekend, but only to stop the leak in the shower upstairs. That'll at least stop the water and buy me some time. (Titans in the playoffs? The house of falling cards has to wait.) Then I'm going tear the wall out and hopefully make my way to the joint on the pvc and seal the leak. If I can't see it from the open wall, supposedly I'm going to have to cut into the ceiling or from the floor above to find it. THAT'S the reason for this blog. (I know you were wondering.) I'm so bad with tools and construction and plumbing and putting things together with simple directions accompanied with photos that this will surely be used as a how-to n't for generations to come. Countdown to destruction: 3 days. Until then, I'm going to use a different shower.