The Bathroom Saga

Part 1 - In The Beginning:

Several years ago, we moved into a new home. I, being the independent little bugger I am, claimed the basement as my bedroom. Not only was it large enough to have a bed area, an office area, and a living area, I basically had my own bathroom. What could be nicer than showering at my leisure, or not having to walk up the dark stairs when I was half asleep if nature felt the need to call at 2 am?

I thoroughly enjoyed this bathroom - despite the dark, walled-in feel of the metal shower cabinet, and the broken flush handle on the toilet - for quite some time... over a year, I think. Then, the unspeakable occured. Back-up. The shower wouldn't drain, the toilet was constantly clogging, the washing machine (however rarely used.. we have one upstairs as well) would flood the floor. It was a nightmare. The fixtures were old, and my newly long hair was falling out at a rampant rate, some zany side effect of a medication. All this added up to a broken loo. Or did it?

Part 2 - It Starts:

Several months ago, we decided that the bathroom, having remained in a state of stasis since the backing up began, needed a facelift. My cousin was coming to stay with us on a temporary basis, in the other half of the basement. Four people sharing one shower, especially when two of those people were three stories away from said shower, seemed out of the question. I'd been using my parents washroom, but things would just get out of hand with Chrissie here, especially considering her penchant for showering around midnight, and my father's habit of heading to the Land of Nod before most people have had supper.

The bathroom needed to be fixed, there was no question about it.

We found, through word of mouth, a quiet, sweet, ex-Israel Army Special Forces, who was now making his living as a general contractor, and at fairly reasonable (read: tax-free) rates, to boot. After some discussion, it was decided he'd do it. I picked out nice fixtures, nice floor tiles, nice paint colour, and so on and so forth, and he took care of fixing the plumbing (or so it seemed), re-drywalling the walls, painting, tiling, plastering, and installing. When they removed the old shower, they found a fairly large clot of my hair, and flushed the pipes several times. The clot, it seemed, had been responsible for our earlier problems.

So, two weeks and the cost of a family vacation to Bali later, I had a shiny and useable new bathroom!

Part 3 - Deja Loo:

Things seemed to be going great. I had a bright, well-lit bathroom I could see through my new glass corner-shower, or while standing at my beautiful new pedestal sink. Sure, the toilet still clogged up once in a while, and the shower always seemed to have about a half-inch of water in it, but it was in the basement.. Basements have less clearance for pipes.. It was normal, wasn't it?

As time went on, the shower was taking longer and longer, the toilet clogging more and more often (but at least it was flushing easier.. right?) but things always seemed to go back to normal.

Then all hell broke loose. Well, enough water to put Hell out, in any case. There I was, minding my own business in the shower, when this horrible brown water started to flow into the shower, up from the drain. And it didn't stop. I turned off the shower spray, quick as I could, but to no avail. It just kept coming. At least it had the common sense to level out roughly at the top of the basin, but any movement, or the occasional burble, would send a tidal wave of unpleasantly unclean water across my nice new tiled floor! My father and I, geniuses that we were, neglected to mention the whole situation to my mother until it got completely out of hand. Call a plumber? Heck why? We have the TLC and the Home and Garden Channel. We can fix anything! Or not.

Our contractor came by after much coersion by my mother to CALL SOMEONE, and brought with him his handy-dandy super-plunger. It was roughly as effective as trying to rid a Persian cat of it's fur with eyebrow tweezers. We also discovered that while his talents were obvious, his credientials were less so. After a row that in retrospect was completely ridiculous and completely avoidable (I won't go into detail but it ended with my mother calling us a series of names that even I won't repeat here, and my father and I continuing to be completely irrational mule-headed know-it-alls), we called in a liscenced plumber.

The preliminary diagnosis was a "broken flapper valve" which would have cost us whatever arms and legs we had left, and left many lovely holes in the basement floor. Thankfully though, the motorized plumbing snake was run through the pipes and removed a fairly significant clog, roughly where the flapper valve was. Yaay! That was the problem. Everything was fine.

For a while, anyway.

Part 4 - Culmination:

One morning not too long after all this, I got up and had a shower, just like every morning since we got the problem solved. Things were fine. I got out, and flushed the toilet. I'd used it before my shower, but had neglected to flush, since I don't like showering while there's water running. Much to my dismay, the toilet flushed out onto the floor... the pipe had backed up again, and the pressure caused the water to come pushing out from beneath, making a great big mess on my floor. I mopped up a bit, called my father at work, and headed off to class.

Part 5 - Conclusion, or Things that Go Bump in the Pipes:

The plumbers had been here for several hours already when I got home today. Things looked grim. We were going to have to drill up the floor after all. There was no other logical explanation... Then suddenly, while they were sending their rotor-thingy through the pipes, a loud clattering thunk shook the entire basement. At roughly 1pm, Tuesday November 12, 2002, our Bathroom Saga came to an end. Some time, during the course of this house's several renovations, a broken peice of ceramic toilet bowl had fallen into the pipes, and during it's course had gotten wedged in the pipes. Our constant fussing would move it from one corner to another, temporarily freeing things up, but had never, until now, completely solved the problem.