The flooring has arrived, and the new bidet toilet is on the way! I started out with a bidet seat, but since the entire toilet is just a little more, I chose the whole unit. And, I found one in black that wasn’t too expensive! I’m sure Mom’s rolling right now, but I’ve done her bedroom and bathroom in black, so I wanted a matching toilet. I tried painting the old toilet but the paint wouldn’t really stick to the porcelain. I can be so destructive.
Adam took up the sheet flooring in the bathroom while I was sleeping, much to my surprise, and I’ve been putting down the new tile. I am doing the large, straightforward parts, and he is doing the corners and odd places. I just can’t get the measuring and tile cutting down; everything gets crooked and I waste an entire tile. There are a lot of odd places because of how much stuff is in the bathroom, especially the garden tub. The before photos are below. It’s not finished, so no after yet. I don’t know why the subfloor has green all over it. Adam thought maybe glue?
After the floor is down, Adam’s going to go around the perimeter with black caulking. I didn’t even think of water getting between the tiles, so if I see any gaps, I want to fill them in with sealer with a toothpick. The sheet flooring I wanted was much too expensive, and I figured the tiles would be okay for such a small area, but I never thought about them being in a wet area. I’m good at thinking of things after making a big purchase.
While I wait for the toilet to get here, I asked Adam to hook the old kitchen sink sprayer up to the toilet and I’ve been using that in place of the bidet 🤣🤣. It’s not the greatest, and I get the floor a little wet, but it works in a pinch. Sometimes it is good that I keep things I don’t need anymore. After having a bidet for years, it’s hard to go without.
I bought the wrong size subfloor 🙄. Adam got the floor laid down in the tiny utility room but not nailed/secured because I have to get the right size. Since it’s a smaller room, I wanted to get , 2′ x 4′ boards instead of 4′ x 8′, so I searched for 23/32″ boards, which is what the rest of the house is, and bought them online without noting the thickness that showed up in the search results. The ones I got are maybe half that thickness and give when I walk on them. I looked up the size I bought, and they aren’t recommended for regular subfloor; more for attics. Certainly not in front of one of the main doors! I felt so stupid. For right now, he doubled what is down, and once again I have to avoid walking in there. It looks better than it did, though!
Adam is going to have to do some cutting and finagling so we have a floor instead of a bridge between the furnace and water tank houses, but since I got the incorrect subfloor, that isn’t something he can do now. To make my mistake even better, I wasted $79 for delivery. I’m sure I can find something to do with the boards, but I don’t know what yet.
I have been taking Phin out with me when I go out on the porch because he loves to eat grass and greenery, to the point that he will climb me if I have a flower in my hair (something I do when Adam brings me one). I put a small dog leash on him and attach it to the cable we have out there. He loves it a little too much and now nonchalantly walks out the door when I have it open to yell for the boys to come in. Luckily, since he can’t see, he doesn’t just take off and jump off the porch, so I have the time to step out and scoop him up before he gets too far. I have a knack for creating monsters 🤣🤣. He sits at the door and meows to be let out now, too.
A few days ago, I was lying in bed in Mom’s room watching TV, and I heard Phin meowing. I thought it was on my movie at first. I told Adam, so he started calling for Phin and looking for him, as Phin gets lost very frequently and cries until we find him or he follows our voice(s) to the room we’re in. Adam checked behind all the closed doors and outside. About the time I was thinking Phin could have climbed under the floor in the kitchen and was going to get up to help with the search, Adams walks into the bedroom holding a defeated-looking Phin and places him on my pillow. He’s a bit dusty and disoriented and sneezy. Indeed, he had climbed under the subfloor by way of one of the open spaces in the boards between the kitchen and utility room. Probably where the water pipes are near the furnace.
Adam said Phin came right to him when he heard him and he was able to lift him out. He was just down there walking around on the insulation 🙄. Adam covered the openings with our handy dandy coffee table top and a few other wood pieces from when he dismantled furniture I wanted to be rid of.
Phin was missing a day or two later, and the hunt was on again. Adam saw that the boys, Nev and Ollie, had messed up his patch job in the kitchen, and once more, Phin was down under the floor. It is going to be a nightmare when Adam replaces the subfloor in other parts of the house. I have some plastic covering set to buy for when that time comes, but I don’t know how well that will work on a determined, blind cat. Mom’s room is on the other end of the kitchen, so Phin trekked quite a ways under the floor for me to be able to hear him the first time.
I waited excitedly for an entire month after we switched to a tankless water heater to see how much it improved the water bill. It had been $80+ for years, and it was in the $60 range when Mom was alive. When the water bill finally came, I burst into tears. It was $405. For a month. To their credit, the water company lady had called us to say we had a leak a bit after the tankless was installed. However, I thought she was talking about the leak that was just fixed, so Adam told her it was taken care of. But, no…this was a different leak, and much worse. What are the chances? Seriously. Our latest readings were 13,000 gallons of water a month, compared to an average of 1,300 (which is still high for two people).
Since there was no water anywhere in or under the house, I asked the lady to send someone out to see if the leak’s on our end or theirs. She completely ignored me (which I should be used to) and let another month go by and another $400 bill come in. With that bill, she sent someone out and he had Adam turn the water off to the house and he watched the meter. The new leak is somewhere between the water shutoff outside our house by the porch and the meter, which is about 30 yards, give or take.
This new leak didn’t happen until we switched from the hot water tank to tankless, and I have no idea why. Adam didn’t bother anything underground, which is where the new leak is located. It is one heck of a coincidence.
I contacted the American Leak Detection place, and they are going to come find the leak with some equipment, but they cannot do that while it is raining, which it has been doing here since February. The guy is supposed to come next Saturday, God willing and the creek don’t rise…which, the creek is rising since it’s been raining for months on end. After that, Adam and I are going to get a crash course in plumbing because we certainly can’t afford to pay a plumber to fix an underground leak. The water bill is over $1,000 now since we’ve had to wait until we had the money for the leak detection guy, and I hate knowing that I have to pay that when I didn’t even get to enjoy all that water. The only silver lining I can see is that the ground should be fairly soft to dig in since it’s…well, mud.
I briefly touched on this leaky subject, but since I can’t remember what I said and this blog is mainly for me, I will reiterate because I want to.
I noticed a black spot on the vinyl flooring in the kitchen roughly eight years ago. It was at the door/wall to the water heater, so, obviously, I was concerned there was a leak there, and Adam unscrewed the door/wall and checked for a wet floor and water damage. We didn’t see any. I thought it was from ice cubes that my cat, Phin, liked to play soccer with and didn’t eat when he was done. The spot never grew, and I eventually forgot about it, wishing to replace the vinyl flooring (at least that section) in the future when possible, but nothing pressing. At that time, it had been two years since a plumber replaced our water heater tank.
Fast-forward to last September, when I noticed the floor from the water heater and furnace alcoves, which are opposite each other, and coming into the kitchen felt more like rubber than OSB. We have a few weak spots in the entire house, which didn’t surprise me for a 20-year-old foundationed double-wide with no renovations to date, and only general maintenance. The spots are in high-traffic areas, with one being where the house halves meet in the middle of the living room, which has been weakish since Mom was alive pre-2014.
Of course, this concerned me a great deal because we don’t have the money for major repairs, so I start mentioning to Adam that I want him to check under the house for wet areas. After several months, I finally put my foot down and got him under there, where he found some wet-ish pipes, but nothing accumulating on the ground. And so the research begins; typical AuDHD fare for me when faced with a problem.
I decided the leak had something to do with the water heater (but no clue what) and I wanted to get a tankless water heater, which I had low-key wanted for months. I’d seen them mentioned before on Reddit and they sounded cool and were supposed to be more energy efficient and take up a lot less space. It would be a win all around. After more research, some Home Depot shopping, and confirming Adam could do the task himself, I became the owner of a new tankless water heat that was so cute and compact, and I was very excited to get it installed, but I needed some additional parts from Amazon, as they were $70+ cheaper than Walmart (Weird. Weird.), and Amazon usually has reasonable shipping times.
Just like what happened after buying Black Betty, we had a massive snowstorm with feet of snow and state-of-emergency weather after I got the vital parts ordered. These things took three months to get here because the roads were so bad, and I had to reorder them three times due to Amazon saying my items were either delivered or lost in transit. The order was broken up into three or four separate deliveries for some reason, so I had to wait for the refunds before reordering. It was a very stressful and lengthy process. The floor situation in the water tank “house” had escalated fairly quickly in those months, considering something had been leaking for a decade unbeknownst to us.
Leaning tower of water tank
All the parts finally got here by the beginning of 2025, and my excitement was back. Adam did his manly thing and, miraculously, removed the water tank by himself, got it walked outside to the porch, and installed the tankless.
Much better, and more room! Maybe some painting later.
While removing the water tank, Adam discovered that the plumber who installed the tank had cut a pipe too short, and the overflow, or whatever it’s called, was going directly under the flooring and on/into the subfloor. For ten years. The circle of floor seen above should not be sunken; hence, the leaning tank.
Just like with Mom’s car, I have no options or means to right this wrong that the “professional” committed. The floor from the side door (the utility room with the washer and dryer and standalone freezer) to some of the kitchen is ruined, and subfloor and flooring needs replaced. No home insurance because I still don’t know how to get Mom’s deed and get my name on it, not that I could afford the insurance, anyway.
The coffee tabletop has been very helpful to walk on.
And…that’s just the one leak that raised our bill roughly $20 a month for 10 years, which I attributed to inflation and greed. The next one is a lot worse and a crazy huge coincidence, which I will cover soon.
Cari R Esta 