Life's a Shiputz #3 Living With a "Half-Full" Loo 🆏 Shower and Better Hot Water Than Before

No doubt, we've all heard the advice to look at a glass of water that only at 50% as "half full" and not "half empty." So due to the Jewish Holidays of Succot-Simchat Torah, which last over a week our contractor has taken off for a holiday break. 

I understand and I'm not complaining. He made every effort to leave the house as livable as possible. A couple of days before Succot he replaced the plumbing in the laundry room and returned the washing machine to its corner. So I no longer had to launder at the very generous neighbors. 

The best thing he did was to make one of the bathrooms usable. The toilet was hooked up to the plumbing, and the shower works. There's even a small faucet next to the toilet, so we can wash our hands. We do have a second fully functioning toilet by the front door. We didn't renovate that part of the house. 

I'm glad that we have a usable toilet and shower. Also, did you notice
that my old accessories match to the new colors?

Considering that we're only two people in the house, and we're not doing any major entertaining, we have all we need. There are lots of families with only one toilet. Here we have two plus a nice shower. OK, I brush my teeth in the kitchen or the sink near the front door. There are worse things. Right? 

And yes, as I wrote in the title, the hot water is better than before!

Probably the worst thing about how this house was built was the plumbing. The pipes weren't well insulated, plus they were strangely routed. Three showers could have been taken with the cold water that came out before we felt something hot. And even though we supposedly had a very large hot water tank there was never enough even for just two of us, and the solar panels only seemed to work in the peak of the summer. 

One of the things that the contractor has to do is to get the electric water heater reattached. Now, even though days are getting shorter and it's getting chilly, the water isn't freezing. I usually had it on for a couple of hours in this sort of weather.

Thank Gd, we're surviving, and I really can't complain. Gd willing, the workers will be back in under a week, and then just a "few" more workdays and both bathrooms will be fully renovated. 

As I've said over and over:

"It's just a bathroom, not someone's health."

Thank Gd we're all healthy. That's all that counts. 

Life's a Shiputz #2 Keeping a Sense of Humor

Major "Surgery" in The Plumbing Department, Update #1

Life's a Shiputz #2 Keeping a Sense of Humor

I made a decision early in the planning of the bathroom renovations aka the "shiputz." It's important to remember that this is only a house, not a human being. It's a shiputz, not medical treatment, not an operation nor cancers diagnosis. I had also decided that I'd go to one store and find tiles and flooring I like in it. I wasn't going to travel all over searching for what either doesn't exist or something extraordinary. In a convenient store in the Shiloh Industrial Zone, Ceramics Depot, which I can even walk to though walking home is much harder, I found tiles and flooring I really like. OK they were the only tiles in the store that I like, but all who have seen them agree that they're gorgeous. 

To do this sort of renovations, there's lots of destruction before the construction and tons of dust, dirt and more. Even those things can be seen with a sense of humor:

I've decided that these ties coming out of the wall of a bedroom must be some
avant-garde modern art "installation." Please don't worry. On the other side of the wall is the laundry room, and totally new piping has been installed. When the cement closing the piping in the wall dries, these wires will be removed and the holes sealed up. 

Isn't it obvious that Triangular composition is a Still Life? I see it. Do you?

There's still more work to go until this project is finished. I'm doing my best to keep smiling.