NO MORE PLUMBING FOR YOU!

            The Victoria Day May Long Weekend is upon us once again officially kicking off summer. I don’t want to jinx it, but as of now the weather forecast isn’t calling for snow but, you know, it’s still a week away, as of this writing, and in Saskatchewan anything can happen. Weather wise that is.

            True to form, though, I had been putting off our bathroom renovation all winter long thinking that it would only take a couple of days to get it done and then the indoor projects would be caught up, for now, and then we could proceed to the outdoor stuff around May Long. HA! Even this old seasoned home improvement veteran should have known better. A couple of days? What was I thinking?   

            We were going to install a new tub surround, a few new mouldings, a new set of taps and antique the oak vanity and linen cabinets. It’s the smallest room in the house for crying out loud so how long can it take? Easy, peasy, eh? Apparently not!

However, we keep forgetting that there really isn’t an “Easy Button”, being slow learners and all, plus we just happen to be our own worst enemies. Our philosophy is-why pay someone to do this stuff when we are perfectly capable of doing it all ourselves?

Now, I do have to qualify a couple of details here, though. You see, to me, demolition is a piece of cake and I’m pretty handy with a saw and a hammer, I don’t really mind painting, I’m a whiz with a caulking gun and I’ll take on some light electrical stuff but when it comes to plumbing I’ve got two words…LINUS…HELP!

Remember that “slow learner” stuff from a few lines ago? I keep forgetting that I can’t do plumbing but I keep trying. That is until a few projects ago when I had to, once again, call on my ol’ buddy Linus Blackstock of LB Plumbing and Heating to rescue me from some dumbass project that I wrongly thought I could handle myself. I must tell you also that there is a bit of a history behind this sort of thing as I have had to call on him more than a few times for some evening and weekend emergencies until finally a while ago he stated to me, ala the “Soup Nazi” from Seinfeld…“No plumbing for you!” This time I called him in before the water even had a chance to spray anywhere. 

The other work wasn’t extremely hard or particularly physically taxing, or anything like that, but it was so damn tedious and time consuming. O-M-G, it dragged on forever.

We had Googled and Googled and You Tubed and You Tubed and read and read about the antiquing process and the different techniques people use…and then we threw all that information out the window and did whatever the heck we wanted to do. But it turned out great, too. It just took a little longer than a couple of days.

Generally I do the rough stuff and the carpentry…not the plumbing…and Deb’s the master artist with the paint brushes and the antiquing glaze. But because the cupboards were all natural oak we had to prime and top coat it a few times and then glaze over top so it seemed that we painted and painted and painted and painted and painted…okay, you get the picture.

It’s all history now. The job is complete and I’d like to thank Mother Nature for providing some cool, rainy weather to accompany our indoor project and now we’re eager to get outdoors and tend to the yard.

There’s lots of time for that, though. It is only the Victoria Day Long Weekend after all. We’ve got the whole summer to work on that kind of stuff. We’ve got to make time for golf, relaxation, food and refreshments and visiting with friends and family. That’s what this long weekend will be about. I think we’ve earned a couple of days off. What’s a couple of days?

“Happiness is a three-day weekend!” Charles M. Shulz (1922-2000).