My Contractor Story

We hired a plumber once. He was a neighbor who lived down the street, too. Never again. He said that the job could be done in 16 hours at $25 an hour. I had to buy all the materials for our DWV system including the rubber balloons to plug the ends of the pipe so that it could be tested for leaks. Those cost me a small fortune. He couldn't do the work himself in the end. He got a buddy to do it for him. His wife had left him for another woman leaving the illiterate 9 year old daughter in his hands so he couldn't find time to do the work.His buddy boasted about how good a plumber he was and how fast he could work. Since I didn't know any better we took them on. After 26 hours and the job still not finished I was getting frustrated with the guy. When he was almost done he demanded payment. I guess he was seeing that he might not get paid at all. So, being idiots we paid him. Then it was a chore to get him to show up to finish the work. When he did show up and finish, he was drunk. As a result he managed to not glue three seams and put 1 1/2" pipe where he should have used 2" pipe. The original guy was supposed to install the spigot into the cast iron basement drain and lead it in but never showed up. My plumbing failed the rough inspection. Neither one of the plumbers would come back to fix the problem so I fixed it. Then the drain was plugged up and Roto Rooter was called to clean out the scale that had fallen down the cast iron main stack when Mr. Moron smacked it with a hammer to bust it out. If he had put a rag in the cleanout drain to catch the scale he would have saved me the $98 Roto Rooter bill.Well, his work is still haunting me. I went to put the toilet back in on the 2nd floor main bathroom only to find that it won't fit! It needs to be 2 inches shorter. Fortunately there is a distance of 10 inches between the wall and the center of the closet flange and you can buy toilets with a 10 inch rough in. So a new toilet cost us $135.00. Putting a perfectly good 12 inch rough in toilet out of commission.

My plumbing has come back to haunt me, too. As it always does. Somewhere behind my marble shower wall the hot water line has popped. Now I have to knock out tile and put holes in the backer board to find the leak so that I can fix it. This just goes to prove that draining the lines and shutting off the water for winter doesn't always prevent the pipes from popping. It's the copper pipe once again. I never have this problem with the plastic. I think I'll go and cry now.....