No pirates, but water is involved

The fixture in our bath/shower was ancient, and badly needed replacing. In addition, we'd developed a leak somewhere in the vicinity, so I went looking for a plumber.

The first place I called for an estimate informed me that they didn't do in-person estimates any more because of gas prices. I described the work to be done in detail, and their estimate consisted of telling me that they'd do the work for $150.00 an hour. Buh-bye.

Next on the list are the folks who installed our new air conditioner a couple of years ago. Good work and I trust them. They offered to have the guy come out, give a "job estimate" (instead of by the hour), for $75.00 and then if I was ok with the price he'd do the work right then, and the $75.00 would go towards the bill. I finally did decide on them, and yesterday was the day.

I can do basic, mechanical plumbing, but this job had the potential to become really ugly in a hurry, so I wanted a pro. He came in, heard my description, looked at things and gave a reasonable price. Not as good as I'd hoped, better than I was expecting, and within 10% of what I'd told Liz I thought it would cost.

While he was putting in the fixture, I was downstairs removing the ceiling in our living room coat closet, because it's right under the bath and the water had been dripping down. He looked around from underneath and did his plumbing magic and two hours later it was done.

Kinda. Now I have to retile the tub, or put in a shower enclosure, and if I'm going to do that then I might as well replace the bathtub, which means I should swap out the toilet so it matches, and the wall sink could be replaced with the pedistal kind, and since I'm going to all that trouble a new medicine cabinet would be nice, which means new electrical outlets and lighting fixtures, and I should go ahead and replace the ancient vent fan with a quiet new one...

Oh yeah, I've just started emptying my wallet on this one.

Posted by Ted at September 16, 2005 05:12 AM | TrackBack
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