BREVITY: Condo Makeover

When we bought our condo back in October, we knew some updates would be in store in the near future. Before Christmas we decided to set aside MLK weekend as Condo Work Weekend. Rebecca's parents came for the weekend, my parents helped, and Matt and Loren came for Saturday. We came up with quite the list of projects to tackle this past weekend. Our work crew did a great job and the only thing we didn't get much of was sleep.

Friday Rebecca and I went to Lowes and Home Depot to purchase all the supplies and products. The plan was to let the Ladies do all the painting and the guys to do everything else on the list. Our place was a rental the prior 25 years, so everything was done for cost and efficiency. All the walls were the same color so Rebecca picked new colors for each room and bathroom.

Her parents arrived on Saturday and we got going. We worked til about 2 in the morning. Sunday we went to church and then got back at it. The most memorable thing happened late Sunday night and well into Monday morning. One of the projects on our list was to replace the shower valve and shower head in our bathroom. It was leaking and the original handles, so we wanted to update it. Dad and I opened it up to look at it and decided "we didn't have the tools to pull this off" during the work weekend amidst all the other projects. So we decided to just change the shower head, which is simple. Changing the handle involved changing the valve, which meant we would have to cut the copper pipes and solder the new valve on. Another big issue with plumbing projects involved cutting off the water. To our knowledge and our neighbors there is no water cut-off for individual units or even buildings (which have 4 units a piece). The only known water valve is at the street which cuts off the water to about 32 units. So making that many people inconvenienced is not a good way to make friends with our new neighbors.

Late Sunday night we decided to attempt to fix the leaks in both our showers. You still have to turn the water off, but you don't have to cut the pipes to replace the valves. So we decided to wait until late that night to turn the water off hoping everyone was asleep. At about 12:30 I took my vice grips to the street and turned the water off. We worked on the guest shower first. It took us about 30 minutes, but we replaced the leaky gaskets and put it back together. I turned the water back on and no leaks. We then debated about doing our shower. We decided it was now or never so I went back outside and turned the water off again. Rebecca's dad began to turn the cap to access the valve. It was not breaking loose so he turned harder. I don't think he realizes his own strength sometimes. When it finally did begin to turn, he wasn't sure if it was just the cap or all the pipes behind it. If it was the pipes it was too late and you had to keep going to find out. The cap finally broke loose and our worst fears were realized. The pipes behind the valve looked like a twizzler. So it was now about 1:45 AM, we had leaky shower valves, and 32 apartments did not have water. If we turned the water back on, the pipes would leak into our walls causing lots of damage. My heart sank about the situation. The day had gone so well and now we were in quite a bind because now so many people did not have water. I went ahead and cut the sheet rock out behind the shower valve to see it from the other side since that would have to be done eventually to fix it. We attempted to rig some way of catching the water and diverting it to the shower drain, but there was no way I could sleep with that going on. We decided to call the 24 hour plumbing hot line. My biggest fear was that there would be a huge fee for after hours call on a holiday weekend. The number diverts you to a national call center which in turn gets a local guy to call you back about your problem. TJ from Evans Services called me back 2:30AM. I told him our situation and asked how much this would cost. He said an after hours service call is $90 if they don't do any work. If we get them to fix something they wave the fee and just charge for the fix. That wasn't nearly as bad as I expected, so I told him to come on. He said it would be an hour before he got there and it would take an hour and half to fix. So that put us at being done at 5 AM, just in time for people to be waking up and needing water. At this point Rebecca and Mr. Chip went to sleep, leaving me to wait on TJ to arrive. I sat by the window watching for the van to pull up. TJ showed up and got to work. Because I was so tired the whole event seemed surreal. I took a picture of him working to document that it really happened. I took him up to our bathroom and showed him the damage. I then asked him about the damage to my wallet. He said normally a valve change cost $500. I thought great, this is definitely not a normal situation. But then he said, how about $300. I was shocked. This was much cheaper than what I was expecting, so I told him to get started. I'm not sure why he knocked off $200. Maybe because we already had the parts and I had already cut the hole in the wall. Or maybe he was just being nice. He definitely had the upper hand so I'm so thankful it was less than expected. I always enjoy watching somebody work who is good at what he does. TJ was definitely skilled and did the whole operation without making any mistakes. It took him an hour and half like he said. By 5 AM we had a leak free shower with the new valve, handle and shower head that we originally wanted and the neighborhood had their water back on. To celebrate I took a shower. I only got about 2.5 hours of sleep before it was time to work again. Surprisingly I was not that tired. The Lord took care of us and in the end the whole situation worked out very well.

We didn't get everything done, but I'm very happy with the things we did get done. Here are some pictures of the updates.