When we first decided to undertake renovating the bathroom, well it wasn't actually the bathroom at all. You see, back in the early days of spring after a long winter of looking at the walls, it turned out we had a hankering to gut the kitchen!Now, to those who first walk into our spacious kitchen and say "wow", we usually say "LOOK CLOSER". The glued-down laminate floor has voids in the glue (which squeak), the cabinets are cheap and falling apart, the walls wobble due to being nothing more than poorly wallpapered wood panelling that has been (barely) tacked over the uninsulated studs, and the layout . . . well . . . blows.
Ah, yes. Another classic Heik room.
But it was not meant to be! When we took a step back, we realized that while we were tuned in to every SINGLE flaw of the kitchen, we were seriously overlooking the fact that our bathroom was disgusting. And so here we are.
Or are we?
As you might recall (or see while reading the back issues of this here blog), the plumbing supply lines for the bathroom were a "dog's breakfast". (In laymans' terms, that means shite.) Actually, the ORIGINAL supply lines were some pretty fantastic (and tidy) 3/4" galvanized steel which for some reason were abandoned in favour of cheap bum loser FLEXIBLE copper tubing. What makes this stuff bad is that it doesn't mesh well with rigid copper because out of 360 possible angles it might splay out at, chances are it won't be one you can work with.
OK, but it's FLEXIBLE right? Maybe not after fifty years. To make a long story short, the first attempt to "straighten it out" had more of a kinking effect. And the only way out of that particular jam was to cut in below the kink, which led us downstairs . . . . . to the KITCHEN!!
So there we were, emptying and pulling down our lovely MDF cabinets over the stove. It turned out to be quite an easy task, as Heik (the idiot) used very little of what people call FASTENERS. In fact, one fine piece was held on by nothing more than edges of wallpaper. Seriously. It didn't take long to spot the copper pipes, though, as he had so cleverly run the range hood's galvanized venting through the wall directly against the copper. Have I said "copper" and "galvanized" enough? That's because putting copper and pretty much any other metal together is a No-No (see "leaks"). Not to mention the fact that the venting was poorly done, and explains the draft we've always had in that corner of the kitchen.
But maybe this rant is just a way to 'vent' because we now see that renovating the kitchen would have been much easier, at least in the destruction, and salvaging of cabinetry (such as they are). We had Heik's shitty handiwork down in minutes. The hard part will be putting it back . . . . without giving into the temptation to rip it ALL down and do it right!
So that's the feature moment from today. Between yesterday's cataclysms and today's Heikysms, we've earned our day off and turkey dinner.
