Friday, July 15, 2011

Water Pressure

My house has a long, colorful history.  Someday I'll write all about it, but for now all you need to know is I've always loved it, and it had lots of issues when we bought it 17 years ago.

Like, lots.

When we moved in, the upstairs shower dripped into the kitchen sink.  One of the first things we did was gut the upstairs bathroom.  Unfortunately, the plumbing wasn't redone quite right and the shower has super wimpy water pressure.  When that became apparent to the part of "we" that isn't me, he got frustrated and said to just forget it.

And he did.

My daughter was the only one who used that bathroom for years, I guess the issues were tolerable because she had her own space.  Then last summer I decided using the downstairs bathroom all the time was just ridiculous.  My son had been working for the borough maintenance department for several summers; I decided between the two of us we could get that bathroom up and running.

And we did.

We took out the sink and toilet, put in a new floor, then reinstalled the sink and toilet...adding a new faucet along the way.  With a little help we sheetrocked one wall, then taped, textured and painted everything.  We put a door on the closet and my son hung new trim.  We added a new light fixture.  It looks great.

But the shower is still really wimpy.  You kind of have to run around to get wet.

Several  people have looked at it over the years.  There's tons of water pressure to the sink, but somewhere in the pipe that leads to the shower head is a blockage. And the pipe is in the wall.

An older gentleman from church came to look at it once.  He took the shower handle off, expecting there to be no pressure there.  He was standing in front of it when he signalled one of the kids to turn the water back on; it came out so hard it plastered him to the back of the shower.

I really did try hard not to laugh.  He didn't end up fixing it.

Maybe I should have tried harder.

I hope I don't come across as a whiner, I don't mean to be.  I'm not attempting to hint that I want somebody to come fix it either; though if it does get fixed someday I won't complain.  I kind of figure it's that way for a reason.  The only way to get to the problem is to cut out the wall in the bedroom next to it...and what a mess that will make.

It's a perfect picture of people, you know?  We can look great on the outside, but have a blockage somewhere in our hearts.  It often takes a big mess before the issue is dealt with and things work better.

I know, it's a lot of philosophy derived from a shower. 

But I've got a lot of time to think while I'm waiting to get wet.

2 comments:

  1. You write such fun stuff Kathy. Thanks.

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  2. What a lovely home! At least the sink and toilet work better now. :)

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