There's a Hole in My Kitchen

This blog may well have to be renamed The Killing Tom Slaughter No-Jury-Would-Convict-Me Manifesto if much more shit happens to my house.



As I type this, I hear the sounds of Morris and Bill holding a conversation through my kitchen ceiling. They are not yelling; they are in fact making eye contact as they speak. Were they inclined towards Three-Stooges style behavior, one of them could easily give the other the patented Moe Howard Fingers-To-The-Eyes Jab. Fortunately for me, they're not--though this day has resembled a Three Stooges episode in nearly every other way.



Morris is my contractor. Several weeks ago, waiting for the southbound #53 near the Lake and Pulaski El stop, I was pondering the downhill slope of my bathroom floor when a van drove past: Carpentry/Plumbing. Since I needed a plumber to take up the toilet and fix whatever was wrong beneath it, and a carpenter to cut the floor to find out in the first place, this seemed like a rather serendipitous state of affairs, so I copied down the number and called him the next day.



He came out and took up the toilet, then put it back and made an appointment to come and take up the floor. Since then he's been here several times--afternoons, a Monday I took off from work, and another Monday where I left Mom here to contractor-sit. In the interim, the upstairs bath has been exactly that--a bath only. No toilet, no sink, nada--in fact, no floor to speak of, just a balance-beam of plywood to stand on, with a bathmat draped over it for drip-drying purposes. Needless to say, I was anxious to get the problem resolved and get a floor in there.



So when Morris called last night to ask if he could get in today, I said "Sure". He showed up at about 9:45, and then went to get Bill, his helper.



They came back and started cutting the floor. About a minute after the saw was turned on, I heard a strange sound, followed by a series of frantic-sounding comments like "oh man!" and "quick, go turn it off!" A moment later Bill, splashed with water from shoulders to knees, came tearing down the steps and ran outside, Morris hot on his heels. I watched as they dug through the snow crust to try to find the water shutoff...meanwhile, the strange sound--now identified as water shooting from a pipe--continued. After a couple of minutes, that sound was joined by another--the sound of water dripping from the kitchen ceiling.



I went to the kitchen and saw a truly wondrous sight--every nail-pop and drywall seam in the kitchen ceiling was oozing muddy rust-colored water. One nail-pop in particular was pouring out a steady stream of muck, but it was clear that pretty soon we were going to have a full-fledged flood on our hands.



They finally got the water shut off, but the damage was done. We put pots and pans and rags all over the kitchen to catch the torrents; but about 20 minutes later, as they wrenched out the damaged pipe, there came a frightening ripping sound from the kitchen, followed by a crash. White Cat came running out of the kitchen with an expression as close to terror as I've ever seen; I ran into the kitchen and found, on the floor, a 3'x3' slab of drywall (now, apparently, wet-wall) which had fallen from above.



This was the first of many such incidents. Between what they've cut down, and what's fallen on its own, the entire undersurface of my bathroom and part of the sewing-room's underbelly is visible--an opening about 8'x10', I would guess. But that wasn't the worst thing that's happened.



Once the joists were exposed, it was clear that there had been underlying water damage--in fact, there were sections of drywall under the toilet that peeled away like a sheet of wet oatmeal. I took pictures of everything that surprised Morris--the little metal band that had been holding up the entire ceiling, for instance. Under the tub was a little better--or so I thought. Then Morris said "Oh, girl, you GOTTA get a shot of THIS."



Camera in hand, I went into the kitchen and asked what I was shooting.

"Go up the ladder," he said. "You'll see it."

I went up the ladder. "I don't see it."

"You don't? Turn a little bit that way." I could tell he was amused.

"Nope...nothing."

"What about right there, at the end of that joist?" he said.



I looked at the joist and followed it along to about 18 inches shy of the wall...



...where it ended. Just ended; terminated in a splintered, waterlogged mass of wood rot.



"Holy crap!" I yelped. "There's nothing there!"



The absence of this joist--or the last foot and a half of it--left the drain end of the tub completely unsupported. (I KNEW something wasn't right about that damn tub--the way the caulk separated, for one thing, and the way it had of wiggling when I would put my foot on the edge and lean...I thought it was just because they'd shimmed it instead of installing it properly...oh, naive, foolish girl, I am!)



They've replaced the joist now, or rather, sistered a new one to the rotten one and built it a little notch in the brick. They're laying the floor upstairs, but every so often, I hear little explosions of debris as they fall through my floor. I never thought nicking a pipe and causing a flood and a ceiling cave-in would be a good thing, but frankly in this case I'm going to have to change that estimation--at least NOW they can fix it right! (How much it will cost, of course, is another question entirely.)



I would like to take Tom Slaughter to court, but everyone says it would cost more than I'd recover. Still, I think there's some criminal malfeasance here, and I'm ready to pursue THAT angle next.