Almost a toilet emergency

The kitchen is about 80% gutted, including the soffits that I despise, which revealed yet another failure that we expected, but is nonetheless a serious drag: the master bathroom toilet is leaking into the kitchen. That means we can’t use the only toilet on the second floor until that room is finished–likely not for many months. We had, just before the pandemic, asked a plumber through our home warranty company about fixing what looked to be a leak from the toilet (the kitchen ceiling was showing water damage), but he thought it was coming from the bathtub. That didn’t make a lot of sense (primarily because this bathtub’s plumbing has been non-functional for a couple years), but because the warranty policy wouldn’t cover replacement of any drywall, tiling or anything else for months and months, we put off the repairs. We knew we were going to do the reno, so it seemed prudent to wait. Now we’re down to two toilets — the old one in the main-floor powder room (below) and the one we just recently re-installed in the basement. This afternoon, Dan went upstairs and used the toilet, and after flushing, heard workers say “whoa!”. When he went downstairs, they told him the leak “gushed” water–fortunately not on them. That’s it for that toilet!

And thank god that we did install the toilet and sink in the basement because the powder room is scheduled to be demoed this week, bringing us down to one toilet for us and crew members. Dan didn’t think we needed to install the new toilet and sink, so today I’m keeping my “I told you so’s” for the blog, snicker. (To be transparent, Dan edits these posts to try to catch my errors of fact and grammar and usage, so he read this.) [This is Dan here, and yes, Catherine, you were right.] Midnight toilet visits down two floors might be a pain, especially for me with bum knees and feet. As I mentioned, this is fun!

The kitchen is nearly gutted and, even with temporary support beams installed, is starting to look like it will be as large and open as we had hoped. You will have to take my word for it because the new windows are covered with plywood to protect the frame and because all the lights are gone, it’s dark!

All of the doorways into the kitchen–three of them–have been covered over with plastic to protect the rest of the house from the demo debris. Generally, we have been able to keep Saoirse away from the crew members except when they come in early in the morning. But she is a smart one. Late in the day when Dan and I were in the kitchen discussing the master-bath toilet problem with the contractors, being sequestered away from people was dog hell, so she figured out that she could just push through the taped-on plastic! The baby/dog gate repurposed:

As the kitchen demo continues, the basement bathroom continues to be dusted with dirt and grime. This actually leads me to an update on lessons learned:

• Always seal the sink drains in the morning so falling crap doesn’t have a chance to get into the drain.
• Have a good stash of disposable wipes available to quickly (and repeatedly) clean debris.
• Have a stash of hand towels at the ready for scads of people to dry their hands–most of which will be quite dirty.
• Get an extra baby/dog gate to protect small ones and workers alike.
• Remember to take pictures when the crew has work lights in place!