Do you remember that old children’s song about the little old lady who swallowed a fly? If you recall the song, she next swallowed a spider to catch the fly… and on and on it goes. Well, I once had a bathroom situation just like that.
We were living in North Charleston at the time in a church-owned parsonage. One night, the church voted to put vinyl siding on the concrete block house that we were living in. The whole renovation would take one week. So a few days later a man from a siding company showed up to take measurements. The next day, the men got to work installing foam board on the outside of the house. But soon the foreman knocked on my door and said they had to stop work because there was a water leak under the house. We needed to call a plumber.
So we notified the church officials, and they called the plumber. A short time later the plumber knocked on my door and said the leak was coming from the bathroom, but he couldn’t fix it because the joists had rotted through. We needed to call a carpenter. So we notified the church officials, and they called a carpenter.
The carpenter got to work to fix the joist, stabilize the under structure of the house, and then turn it over to the plumber. The plumber came in the house, walked into the shower, gently tapped on the shower floor with a hammer, and the entire shower floor proceeded to disintegrate and fall through to the ground below. Whoever had originally built the house had tiled over wood... there was no shower pan installed. We were skinny back then, and lucky we didn’t fall through the floor.
The plumber installed a shower pan and then said we needed to call a tile man. By this time, the small job that the church had originally voted for had soared in cost. So the church officials did what most church officials do, they hired the lowest bidder.
In came the tile man, and even though I rarely judge on appearance, this guy looked like he was lost in the 60s. I knew we were in trouble on the second day of his employment when he came to work with his wife and two children who were running amok through my house. To make matters worse he was filling a wheelbarrow full of mortar and rolling it into the house, dripping globs across the living room carpet and into the bathroom. No plastic was put down. So I knew when he was finished, the church would have to hire a carpet cleaner.
A few days into the tiling, my jewelry began to disappear. The only people who had been in that side of the house were the tile man and his wife. So I began to question them as to where was my jewelry. They denied knowing anything about it.
Concerned, I called a friend in our church who was a local police officer. When he asked for the name and description of the man, I gave the information and waited for results. In seconds, my officer friend told me this man had a warrant out for his arrest, and would I keep him there. They were on their way.
Within minutes, the man was handcuffed and arrested in my living room while his wife and two children watched. I felt so guilty, but I really missed my jewelry. Well, off he went in the police car while his wife and children climbed in their truck and drove off. The officers told me I would never see my jewelry again. I checked with pawn shops with no luck.
A few days later another man showed up at my house to install tile. He took one look at the mess the former tiler had made and said it all had to come out. The church officials were hoping to save money by keeping the original toilet and sink, and by demolishing and removing the old tile themselves. So they pulled out a sledgehammer, and destroyed it all while accidentally hitting through the drywall into the next bedroom. Now we would need to call a drywall man and a painter.
And as they hammered up pieces of mortar and old tile, they accidentally hit the sink and broke it in half. They hauled it away, sheepishly grinning and knowing the cost just went up. Next, they prepared to haul out the toilet, but accidentally dropped it going down the stairs and smashed it.
Meanwhile, the vinyl siding was up, the outside trim was painted, and everything looked beautiful. But on the inside, my jewelry was gone and the new tile man couldn’t start work for another few weeks. I was doing my best to remain positive and keep my smile firmly fixed on my face at church while all the time not sleeping for fear a raccoon would come up through the hole that was once the floor of my bathroom, somehow get through the closed door, jump up on my bed, and kill me in my sleep.
It was rough.
But finally, six weeks later, my beautiful bathroom was finished with no raccoons. I sighed in relief and with joy thinking the worst was over.
But the next day I went out to the door of our detached garage, cut on the light, and discovered much to my horror that we had been robbed by the vinyl siding construction crew. So once again the officers came to my house and took a report. But they never found anything that had been stolen.
Every time I hear a complaint from someone who is having construction work done in their home, I just roll my eyes. “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.”
