Now that I have my internet back up I’m going to try to record my trials and tribs on the reno a little better. Yesterday the plumbers were scheduled to be here at 7:00, so naturally they showed up at 9:00. The plan was for them to put the bathroom in the suite back together, but this got sidetracked big time. While they went to get the materials they needed Chris and I were to rip off the board and get the room ready. I asked Chris to pull up the loose vinyl and when he did all the back was wet and covered with the dreaded black mold. As usual, one thing led to another and we ended up cutting out the floor to get rid of all the mold. Needless to say no new fixtures were going in today.

Scotty planned to cut off the existing water lines so we could remove all the existing plumbing, so he asked where the shut-off was. Thus began the massive search for my main shutoff valve. They were crawling all under the trailer trying to trace the water line. Assuming it was outside near the main electrical feed I started weed-wacking and cutting limbs to remove the overgrown trees. When we cleared out all the crap we discovered the shut-off valve, which they shut-off and went back to the original plan to cap the lines. Chris and I were still clearing out all the crap and I noticed the water was trickling out, which should not have been happening with the main shut-off. It turned out that the idiot had run an irrigation line off the main BEFORE the shut-off valve, and it was leaking. Duh! I called Laura, the park manager and she said she had to give twenty-four hour’s notice to shut the park water off, so that was out of the question. We had no choice but to break off the irrigation line and try to cap it. The second they broke the line we had a gusher. Watching Scotty’s helper, Tyler, try to cap a blasting water line was funny if it wasn’t so tragic. Then it turned out he had the wrong size fitting, so he had to try to stem the flow while Scotty hunted for the right fitting, which he finally did. Quite the adventure!

Now that we have the moldy floor out we have to let it dry, then cut new flooring for when they come back. The interesting sidebar to the bathroom saga is that there was just a little crack in the original tub. The rest of the bathroom wasn’t too bad, and I considered fixing the crack, if only because this was to be my bathroom during the rest of the renos, and I’m trying to live in the suite, so I didn’t really want to start destroying anything in this area. That one little crack turned out to be a blessing because leaving this mold would have been tragic. I was very concerned about the musty smell when you came in, but I thought it was just because the unit was old and had all the wet ceiling and insulation, but this bathroom turned out to be the cause of most of the smell. It already smells much better in here now that the black death is gone.

Stay tuned.