The 2 day project

For the last 5 days our jack of all trades – Norm – has been at our house re-doing our primary bathroom which is located off the hallway on our main floor. While there was nothing aesthetically wrong with the room, the shower was starting to leak slowly into the basement and mold was beginning to grow behind the tiles. For fear of sitting in the basement, watching TV and having the ceiling collapse on us from water damage, we decided to bite the bullet and get this repaired sooner rather than later.Typically when we call Norm to get on his schedule, we can guarantee at least a 3 or 4 week wait before he can get to us. When we called him on Monday, he said he could start the next day. Obviously times are tight in Norm’s world which is unfortunate for him but worked out very well for us. Norm showed up two days later (the next day actually did not work for us) and gave us a quote for “probably around $800.. unless there is some unforeseen mess when I tear out the shower”. This in itself made my husband and I cringe. The man who owned our house prior to us buying it was a self-proclaimed “handy man”. Please note the quotes around handy man. Unfortunately over time, we have found more than our share of things that he has tried to “fix” that has ended up costing us substantially when they break and we need to fix again. We never know where these fixes are or when they are going to pop up. The timing is generally never good. So.. needless to say, the bathroom was another one of these situations.Apparently the prior owner had installed the shower plumbing himself and had done a very shoddy job. Norm had to not only replace the plumbing in the main bathroom but also in the bathroom off of the master bedroom where the (cough) stellar prior guy had connected the two pieces of plumbing. Why have 2 when you can jerry rig it with one right? So..our two day job is now on day 6 and is undoubtedly going to cost much more than the originally quoted $800. The good news is that he thinks he’ll be done today. The results, while not yet finished, are great. Norm is fabulous and we can’t say enough great things about the work he does. Hopefully by the end of today, we will have a pretty new shower that is mold free with leak free plumbing and the comfort of knowing that yet another project of the former guy has been corrected and won’t come back to bite us when we least expect it.