The Further Adventures of Heidi and Wendy

Ch. 5 - Do You Smell Gas? & Ch. 6 - Remodeling: The Professionals

{These chapters really kind of fit together, and since I'm getting farther and farther behind in my story - and then I start writing the Cliff Notes version, which just doesn't capture the whole essence of the adventure - I figured I could combine these.}

So as I mentioned previously, I decided it would be best to have the tile professionally installed. The floor guy at Home Depot did nothing to change my mind - where the ladies in plumbing were positively convinced Heidi and I could do anything and everything ourselves, the floor guy kept looking askance at the idea that we were planning to handle just the demolition part. (We figured tearing stuff out was the easy part, right? But you've already read that part of the story....) I can't even begin to tell you how many times he asked if I were positive there was only one layer of vinyl flooring, and if I were positive it didn't have asbestos lining underneath. I kept telling him I couldn't be 100% positive, but I was at least 99% considering my home was built in 2002 and I know I haven't added a layer of vinyl over the original flooring and was pretty positive the builder hadn't thrown down an extra layer just for kicks and giggles.

But at last we had all the stuff at my house and the professionals scheduled to come the morning after YWiE. And this is where the gas part comes in - the first thing the tile guy says when he walks in my house is "Do you smell gas?" Well, I didn't, but I checked the stove anyway to make sure all the knobs were entirely off. But every single time the guy came out of the bathroom he would make a comment about how strongly he could smell gas. I still didn't, but I did have a sinus infection at the time. But Heidi said she didn't really, either. Anyway, he gets done laying out the floor, but on the way out the door basically tells me he doesn't feel safe coming back to a house that's full of natural gas (and they needed to come back the next day to grout the tile), and that he's very concerned about us being there. That's the entirety of my story related to him for that day - they came, they worked in the bathroom, they left. I didn't really watch.

But after they left, I thought I ought to call the gas company and have them check for a leak. I wasn't panicking or anything - I figured I could smell, even with the sinus infection, so if there was one it couldn't be that bad. But of course, mainly for liability issues, the gas company had to order me out of the house while they sent someone to check it. Heidi had left on a walk, and Aubrey was completely willing to play outside, so that just left Bodie and me feeling disgruntled about the whole thing. Bodie spent the whole 20 minutes wait running from door to door looking for someone to let him back in, alternated with looks of death my direction for torturing him with "outside" during daylight. (He goes out quite willingly for a couple of hours after dark every day.)

So the guy from the gas company comes, and at first he tells me it's just sewer gas - remember, we have the toilet uninstalled at this point - and I'm feeling very stupid for bugging them and trying to explain this whole story about the crazy tile guy. He actually said I could come in while he was checking, he was so sure it was nothing. He's required to get his little gadgets out and check to "clear the house" though - and this is where he discovers that I do, in fact, have a small gas leak somewhere in my house. Only he can't find it! This poor guy had to be in his late 50s, a little overweight - and he's huffing and puffing all around my house inside and outside trying to figure out what the heck is leaking. I have the furnace, hot water heater, fireplace, and stove to worry about, and he must have checked them all 5 or 6 times. To make a long story not-quite-so-long, he finally found a small leak in the connection between the stove and the wall. I was thrilled with this, honestly, because at first he thought it was coming from inside the wall by the fireplace, and that didn't sound like it could be fixed at all cheaply!

So he disconnected the stove, shut off the gas there, and gave my this great standard written warning about correcting the problem or risking blowing myself up. More liability issues there, I'm sure, because he actually laughed a little about how small the leak was and reassured us that we weren't in any danger, just needed to pick up the stuff to fix it at Home Depot. (Another trip to Home Depot! I think I might as well move in there, as much as I've gone over the past month.)

So off to Home Depot, where they sold me a kit that was suppose to have everything, plus the two wrenches I would need for connecting and disconnecting - and the plumbing people at Home Depot also seemed to think Heidi and I were perfectly capable of hooking up a gas stove. (So if you're keeping track - so far the "experts" think we can handle all the parts involving putting new expensive stuff in the house, and the part with the potentially combustible gas, but doubt that we can handle tearing out the old, used stuff I'm just planning to throw out so doesn't matter how much we ruining it.)

But the stove wasn't as easy as they made it sound. Problem one, breaking the seal formed by plumber's cement is really hard, especially when compounded by that fact that Heidi and I weren't exactly sure how much we could yank on it. They were very explicit that the point of the two wrenches was to use counterpressure on both sides of the fittings so that nothing inside the wall or on the stove broke in the process. We pushed and pulled as hard as we dared, and got absolutely nowhere! And problem two, apparently nothing in my house is a standard size, including the stove fittings. I must have made at least three trips to Home Depot and Lowe's trying to find the right size fittings with the proper male/female threads, and in the end when we finally thought we had it all hooked up...

It leaked. Badly. Much, much, much worse than the original leak. The kind of leak where you can hear it whistling before your brain even has a chance to realize it smells gas. The kind of leak that makes the little soapy water leak test completely unnecessary. And having already spent at least $45 on various parts, and made so many trips in and out of Tulsa - and most of all, lived without a stove for several days during the whole process - I finally decided to just hire a plumber and leave the gas stove to the experts. Plumbers are expensive! But he got it all hooked up and functioning in about 30 minutes, so I'm just calling it money well spent.

So, for your disgust - this is what it looked like behind/under my stove when the gas company guy first pulled it out from the wall:And a slightly funny story to go with that - my cats like those fuzzy little mice to play with, and of course they're always disappearing. So I looked behind the stove and exclaimed "Aubrey, look at all the mice back here!" - and there's dead silence from Heidi for a minute, then she's all "Uh, mice?" And here I am trying to be all self-sufficient, before deciding I had no clue what I was doing:And back to the tile story. I missed Day 2 of the whole process, as I had to be at school. Heidi said it was really funny, though, because when she opened the door the tile guy was in full-on 3-year-old, got-to-go-pee-right-now, dance mode, and the first thing he said to her was "Can I use your bathroom?" And after that he spent a while congratulating himself for saving our lives by smelling the gas leak.

But in the end, I was quite happy with his tile work, and there's no point in being irritated that he was a little overdramatic about the whole gas leak thing when there actually was a gas leak. Here's a peak at the floor. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a picture before we'd put the vanity in, so you can see the corner of that as well. And you can't tell from the picture, but the walls are not white! (No matter what Heidi says!) The color is called Toasted Oatmeal, and it's kind of a cream color on the orange-ish edge of the cream spectrum. I think the floors turned out absolutely beautifully, and I'm so glad I decided to go with tile!