Honestly, things have gone from bad to worse and worse and worse with my apartment in the last few weeks. I needed a vacation from it all... including the narrative documentation. I went to Mexico with my girlfriend. To two "design hotels, " to rejuvenate my enthusiasm for this endless project. Now I'm back and I'm ready to paint my kitchen turquoise like the beautiful hotel
Condesa DF and plumb my bathroom like the unimpeachably hip
Hotel Basico, with the pipes right out there where I can see 'em. I think I'll put them in and then hold a seminar for all the hack plumbers running pipes to nowhere in this city. Three principles of amateur plumbing: 1. follow gravity 2. water tight seal. 3. DON'T CHOP DOWN THE REST OF THE HOUSE TO PUT THE PIPES IN. We've already dealt with the violation of principle number 1, and we've paid another two grand to have that fixed. Now, the update: here's how I learned the next two principles.
About three weeks ago, the day before I left for my vacation, I had the friendly guys from Komfort plumbing in to test the pipes they'd straightened out (i.e. fixed from being "back pitched" so that they now pitch towards the main waste stack), and the vents extended right up through the roof to take the sewage gas OUT of rather than INTO the house. It all seemed great, it had cost a fourth of what the other plumbers proposed because they charged me by the hour instead of by the job, and best of all, it seemed DONE. Luckily I was sitting on the top of the stairs waiting around while they tested for any leaks. I glanced down into the wrecked floor, and guess what I saw? A big stream of water pouring out of the main connection to the waste pipe for the entire apartment! They hadn't even touched that, they hadn't even looked at it before they fixed everything that led into it. So I left for my trip knowing that when I got back I'd have to deal with tearing out the downstairs ceiling after all so that they could get at this pipe. I'm not even going to mention the gas leak... it had me seeing stars... but its easy to fix compared to the rest.
I made the judgement call not to tear out the pipes and redo the whole thing underneath the floor. I was wrong. My mistake for listening to the Komfort plumbers instead of the building instead of the building inspector. Yesterday I got a new *LISCENCED & INSURED* contractor in to look at fixing the beams in the bathroom floor and the first thing he said was that he didn't know what to do to fix it - and again, who the hell would cut beams like that? The worst part is, he pointed out something the building inspector missed, which is that the beam that is the worst off holds up four other beams around the chimney!!!! And its a goner. No steal plate can save it. So out come the straightened out pipes, the chopped up beams, my decrepit but beloved wide plank pine floor boards (just in the entry hallway though). So we're going to have to redo the pipes after all, but at least not all of them, and he figured out what seems like a good way to brace up all the beams around the damaged area. I won't try to describe it... this is what 1/4 of a beam looks like.
Analysis of the liabilities of trying to DIY being a contractor: although the plumbers did the wrong thing, I paid them so much less to do some good work and some useless work than I would have to get the whole job done by someone else that I think my mistake was less costly than turning over the job to a contractor or even one of the other plumbers who wanted to do a lot more unnecessary work. In the end, we have to redo half the waste pipes - only the ones in the bathroom, but not the ones in the kitchen. If we'd done the whole thing we'd have made a big ugly box hanging from the ceiling below. This way the who redo is ending up exactly where I though it should go six months ago: in the closet right underneath the bathroom.
A public service announcement from Dineen Contracting, who came for a second estimate on my tragic beam situation. But first, I don't think I've mentioned the discovery of a certain Pepsi can that was cut up and used to secure the water pipes in the kitchen - thanks Mike the contractor! He was a little shocked that "this is my competition?!*?!" I would have never known about the Pepsi can if we hadn't just ripped open the kitchen wall to vent the sink and dishwasher. What dishwasher, I'm sure everyone wants to know? The $1200 18" Miele Incognito dishwasher that has been biding its time in my mother's living room, right next to the embattled square toilet, whose fate is still uncertain. The absurdity of the situation is creeping up on me... the high end fixtures, beautiful tiles, hip design magazines piling up in an apartment that I might as well have hired a kindergarten class to renovate. At first I felt screwed. I'm starting to feel like a fool. I had no idea how wrong it could go.... I guess the lesson is, you want the contractor to be at least half as technically skilled as your dishwahser. The problem is that, even going for the GE instead of the very best (looking) dishwasher I could find, getting a comparable contractor is a lot more expensive. But since you can't sheetrock over a dishwasher, like you can over beams and sewer pipes, my priorities were out of order, like the rest of the house is now.
