I just want a BATH!
Oh, where to begin?
I've had issues with the garden tub in this apartment pretty much from day one. It gets re-caulked every year, sometimes twice. Last week I gave specific instructions that I wanted *ALL* of the old caulk removed, backer rod put into the nearly 1/2" gap that is between the top lip of the tub and the bottom edge of the tile all along one wall and other spots (the dang tile looks like a set of teeth from "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"), and to then caulk it with silicone caulk. Suffice to say, NONE of that was done. The guy even left the black mold that had been growing under the split caulk in a 6" stripe along the top edge of my tub. GROSS.
Well, it took me FOUR HOURS to clean all the built up caulk that they've shoved into the wall over the years. With my back issues, this was NOT a good thing, but it was better than letting Henry (Mr. Not So Handy) take a whack at it. There was caulk in there as wet as the day it came out of the tube. It was a nightmare. And just for the punchline? Backer rod costs a whopping $4 for a 20 foot roll. Yes, yes, that's right - they could have saved me four hours of cleaning up their mess, plus another 2 hours of laying in backer rod and re-caulking, for the grand price of $4. The apartment complex has made it sorta right, however - the guy who did the job has been fired. Pity that I didn't learn that on Friday. I re-did the tub on Sunday. I could have waited and let the new guy do it today! The new guy was nice enough to fix the leaky faucet that the old maintenance man said couldn't be fixed. And it only took him about 10 minutes - go figure.
At any rate, midnight rolls around after a hard day of water aerobics, cooking, house cleaning and then dog training class. I decide to go take a long, hot bath in my newly caulked and scrubbed garden tub. And then... as I reach for the light, I hear it: drip, drip, drip, DRIP DRIP DRIP SPLAT. Awwww FUCK.
In one of those apartment nightmare moments, I soon realize it is NOT the faucet that's driven me nuts for over a month now. No, no... there's a 3 foot wide puddle on my newly redone. The floor is a whole 'nother story, but the short version is that due to a water leak from said faucet issues earlier in the year, I had to have the wall patched and when they removed the baseboards they pulled up a tile or two. Instead of replacing said tile they patched it back together and it subsequently came up. Turns out there ARE no matching tiles. The idiot left a bare spot on the floor which we then had to cover up with a sheet of plastic during the nearly a week (including a scheduling error) that it took for them to come redo the flooring lest we be subjected to a human fly trap like stickiness.
But... I digress.
Looking up, I see water coming through the ceiling. Yes, yes, that's right. The ceiling. The upstairs neighbors had their toilet back up and apparently didn't clean it up/stop the toilet completely, and so it had been leaking through my ceiling around the edges of the exhaust vent. There's a large spot on the ceiling, and the wall now has a new crack at the mid-point where the two sheets of dry wall join as there's not a stud there to support it. It looks like water has leaked down inside the wall because I have a wet spot right there in the middle, all the way across, about one inch tall as well as a large spot at the bottom. And, of course, the spot at the bottom is RIGHT where they just patched, dammit.
To his credit, the emergency maintenance guy showed up within 30 minutes, albeit looking like he just rolled out of bed. Go figure. He shop-vac'd the apartment upstairs and I guess turned their water off. Then he came down and checked out my wall and sprayed it with something to keep it from getting moldy. They'll be back at 10 am.
Joy. So much for sleeping in.
Cranky Mel.
I've had issues with the garden tub in this apartment pretty much from day one. It gets re-caulked every year, sometimes twice. Last week I gave specific instructions that I wanted *ALL* of the old caulk removed, backer rod put into the nearly 1/2" gap that is between the top lip of the tub and the bottom edge of the tile all along one wall and other spots (the dang tile looks like a set of teeth from "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"), and to then caulk it with silicone caulk. Suffice to say, NONE of that was done. The guy even left the black mold that had been growing under the split caulk in a 6" stripe along the top edge of my tub. GROSS.
Well, it took me FOUR HOURS to clean all the built up caulk that they've shoved into the wall over the years. With my back issues, this was NOT a good thing, but it was better than letting Henry (Mr. Not So Handy) take a whack at it. There was caulk in there as wet as the day it came out of the tube. It was a nightmare. And just for the punchline? Backer rod costs a whopping $4 for a 20 foot roll. Yes, yes, that's right - they could have saved me four hours of cleaning up their mess, plus another 2 hours of laying in backer rod and re-caulking, for the grand price of $4. The apartment complex has made it sorta right, however - the guy who did the job has been fired. Pity that I didn't learn that on Friday. I re-did the tub on Sunday. I could have waited and let the new guy do it today! The new guy was nice enough to fix the leaky faucet that the old maintenance man said couldn't be fixed. And it only took him about 10 minutes - go figure.
At any rate, midnight rolls around after a hard day of water aerobics, cooking, house cleaning and then dog training class. I decide to go take a long, hot bath in my newly caulked and scrubbed garden tub. And then... as I reach for the light, I hear it: drip, drip, drip, DRIP DRIP DRIP SPLAT. Awwww FUCK.
In one of those apartment nightmare moments, I soon realize it is NOT the faucet that's driven me nuts for over a month now. No, no... there's a 3 foot wide puddle on my newly redone. The floor is a whole 'nother story, but the short version is that due to a water leak from said faucet issues earlier in the year, I had to have the wall patched and when they removed the baseboards they pulled up a tile or two. Instead of replacing said tile they patched it back together and it subsequently came up. Turns out there ARE no matching tiles. The idiot left a bare spot on the floor which we then had to cover up with a sheet of plastic during the nearly a week (including a scheduling error) that it took for them to come redo the flooring lest we be subjected to a human fly trap like stickiness.
But... I digress.
Looking up, I see water coming through the ceiling. Yes, yes, that's right. The ceiling. The upstairs neighbors had their toilet back up and apparently didn't clean it up/stop the toilet completely, and so it had been leaking through my ceiling around the edges of the exhaust vent. There's a large spot on the ceiling, and the wall now has a new crack at the mid-point where the two sheets of dry wall join as there's not a stud there to support it. It looks like water has leaked down inside the wall because I have a wet spot right there in the middle, all the way across, about one inch tall as well as a large spot at the bottom. And, of course, the spot at the bottom is RIGHT where they just patched, dammit.
To his credit, the emergency maintenance guy showed up within 30 minutes, albeit looking like he just rolled out of bed. Go figure. He shop-vac'd the apartment upstairs and I guess turned their water off. Then he came down and checked out my wall and sprayed it with something to keep it from getting moldy. They'll be back at 10 am.
Joy. So much for sleeping in.
Cranky Mel.