The Blonde Leading the Blind

The saga of our upstairs bathtub began over three years ago before we even closed on our house.

I’ve never lived anywhere that was brand new.  I’ve never even bought a new car.  And, honestly, nearly every piece of furniture in our house is a hand-me down or a gift of some sort, so Spider-Husband and my hopes weren’t exactly high when we started looking for a house.

After looking at some older homes in the area that needed a lot of work and some newer homes in the area that were a little small, Spider-Husband and I were thrilled when we found a new development we could actually afford and spent many a night driving over to see the progress when our house was under construction.  So, you can imagine my joy when I walked in to the main bathroom upstairs and saw that one of our builder’s subcontractors had knocked something into the shower wall leaving a fist size hole with cracks radiating out of it about a week before we closed on the house.

I freaked out.  And, several emails to the builder and calls to our realtor later, we were assured that the tub would be repaired before closing and all would be well.  Yes…I said repaired.  I was furious and couldn’t believe that a company would think that it was in any way acceptable to patch a fixture that was fine when it was installed, then damaged by someone that they hired as a subcontractor, and then behave as if the old, but repaired, tub was as good as new.  We were told that it happens all the time and that to replace the tub at that point would require them ripping out an entire wall of our house to get the unit upstairs and would significantly delay our closing date.

In the end, we lost the fight after our realtor talked to some tub repair companies to learn more about how durable the patches really were and the builder agreed to add documentation to our paperwork that the tub had been damaged and patched prior to closing and that the manufacturer’s warranty would still be valid.  Neither one of us we’re really ready to surrender, but in the end, we felt backed against a wall since our lease had already been terminated on our apartment, and we were in the throes of our own wedding planning.

Here we are six cracks and five patches later, and our builder has finally decided to replace the tub.  Not with the same tub, of course, because of the whole tearing out of a wall thing.  But, what we’re assured to be an equal quality of tub that comes in three separate pieces so it can easily be maneuvered up the stairs and through the door frames without further damage to our house.

Spider-Husband and I scheduled the work for this past Tuesday since we’d already planned to take a week off from work to do some projects around the house.

Damaged tub removed on Tuesday.  Check.

New tub installed on Tuesday.  Check.

Three inch gap in between new tub and existing flooring and drywall discovered on Tuesday.  Check.

Nice, eh?

The Blonde pushed over the ever-lovin’ edge on Tuesday.  Check.

Hoping to avoid a total Blonde meltdown, Spider-Husband begins another round of phone calls, voice mails, and emails to our builder’s warranty department, who is apparently as stunned as we are about the giant gap that now encircles our tub when assessing the situation in person yesterday morning.

“That’s not the same tub they usually install.  The other model makes a small gap, but we just cover the it up with some trim.”

Good to know.  I’d hate to think that you actually planned things this way.  I’m actually a little stunned you don’t have three-inch wide trim in stock since that seems to be the solution for fixing everything.

So, here we sit on Friday morning with a tub that can’t be used unless we suspend the shower curtain from the ceiling since we have no walls to rehang the curtain rod between and can’t get the subfloor wet; a toilet sitting in our garage since the plumbers decided it was best to remove it since we need new flooring now anyway; an order in for replacement flooring that “comes in when it comes in”; several chunks missing from our walls that occurred during the transport of the old tub downstairs and the new tub upstairs; and our warranty supervisor sitting in his truck across the street waiting to see if the drywall crew is, in fact, coming today to make the repairs or not.

I’m really glad we opted not to tear out that wall three years ago.  ’Cause this is way better.