On unnecessary holes and fixes

The hole in question.

I have a hole in my bedroom ceiling. I’m looking up at it now from the vantage point of my bed. It’s more like a rectangle, really. It’s not very big but it is looming large in my mind because it’s one more thing I don’t know how to do that I have to do regardless, like parenting or navigating separation and divorce.

This week a lot of things decided to go boom on me. Someone stole my green bin for reasons that I can’t conceive of and can only wonder over. The stove stopped baking (again) and the dishwasher stopped washing. In the early hours of Wednesday — 1:33 a.m., to be precise — the smoke alarms started beeping in the insistent nag-y way that I’ve come to understand means the batteries need changing.

I managed to change the batteries in two of the alarms (I keep a stash of batteries because of prior waking events like this), but the third one was too high for me to reach so I had to batter it with the pointy end of the broom like a Far Side wife to make it stop.

On Saturday morning the bathtub faucet – the hot water one, which is my favourite faucet; I simply can’t get enough of that one – underwent something like the human equivalent of a mental breakdown. Her threads stripped by overuse or ungentle handling, she wouldn’t turn off no matter how many times I tried to coax her into compliance.

When the sorrows of the hot water faucet did not respond to my kindness, I attempted to subdue her with brute force. I grabbed a pair of rusty pliers I found in the basement and applied them to her spout. You would think this would have ended the conflict, but as is always the case with the application of brute force, it only made the situation worse. The more I twisted the spout with the pliers, the more water started pouring out and in a few new directions, including up and in one straight shot directly against the wall.

We need a plumber, said my 10-year-old who had been quietly watching me swear and struggle with the spout for enough time to make this wise deduction. He dutifully picked up my phone and started searching plumbers.

I had no luck with the first two numbers, but fortunately the third emergency plumbing service bit on my distress. Within two hours a plumber arrived, a nice seeming youngish guy that didn’t make me nervous in my own home (a thing that many a service guy has done prior).

The plumber was fine but the news was not ideal: the person who installed the bathtub in the house didn’t do it correctly – i.e. they had not put a visible turn-off valve into the system — and so the plumber would need to cut into the ceiling beneath the tub or the floor beside the tub to locate the pipe so he could cap the line and stop the endless flow of the faucet. He wasn’t sure which and maybe he would have to do both.

Do you repair the wall or the floor? I asked.

No. We don’t do that.

And it costs an outrageous amount of money you don’t have in any of your two bank accounts to fix this one problem (the faucet) and the other problem (the holes) that I’m going to leave for you. (I’m paraphrasing / projecting that last bit.)

Fabulous. Here’s my credit card, I said.

The plumber went upstairs and cut a hole in my bedroom ceiling, which is just below the bathtub upstairs, and when he cut the hole in my ceiling he realized this was not such a good idea (no discounts for mistakes, alas) and went back upstairs and cut a hole in the floor next to the tub, which turned out to be the good idea because he was able to cap the line and the hot water faucet stopped pouring her heart out and up and against the wall.

Now I’m left with the unnecessary holes and the problem of how to fix them, which I’m assuming necessitates drywall-type skills for the ceiling and wood ones for the floor, both of which I am going to figure out, by god.

A couple of years ago I vowed to stop asking for help when it comes to home repairs if I was able to figure it out myself, or if I was able to Facetime my dad who would offer me advice on how to fix the issue.

Since that vow, I’ve hung a door, fixed a hole in the wall, erected a lean-to in the backyard, and put together every piece of tech and IKEA-based endurance trial necessary to domestic survival.

These are small victories maybe but why measure the size of a victory when you can count it instead?

It is an unrelenting source of satisfaction to me not to have to rely on any Dilbert-with-a-drill to help me (again, with the exception of my dad via Facetime who is no a D-W-D but an actual godsend).

I’m going to fix this damn hole – actually, rectangle – in my ceiling* this week. And the repair is going to look like shit because I’m not very good at home repairs but it’s also going to be wonderfully satisfying. Because the minor victory shit is wonderful as long as you count them and don’t measure them. And the unnecessary holes will be patched even if you aren’t sure how.

* I will think about the hole in the floor another day.