OurBaffroom Adwenchur, Parte de Cinco (Involving de Sinko)

Okay, I'm gonna have to stand up for this one and scream directly into the microphone.

Nearly all of the stuff we've ordered so far for the new bathroom has arrived. We have the tub. We have the toilet. We have the Price Pfister shower trim. We have the Price Pfister sink faucet. We have the Price Pfister shower/tub valve that all that Price Pfister stuff plugs into. We're still waiting for the actual sink and vanity, but we're not ready to deal with that anyway, so it hardly matters that it won't be here for another week. We also have yet to order the tile for either the surround or floor (which we'll have to install before putting in the vanity, so maybe we'd better get on it). And despite all our research and planning and phone calls to manufacturers to try and assure that we weren't ordering more chrome-coated EFFING plastic, this too has failed to happen.

Let me start with the Price Pfister "Portland" shower trim, which I find to be decent stuff and have no real problem with the materials from which it is made. Okay, sure, the Price Pfister tub spout is visually almost indistinguishable from the $9 metal tub spout we bought for our previous tub that we just tore out. But, I'm not angry about that. At least it's metal. Also metal is the water control lever, all nice and heavy chromed brass. The shower head is chrome-coated plastic, but we knew that before we bought it, not only because it was described as "decorative" on the site we bought it from, but also because a Price Pfister customer service rep told us it was when we called to ask about the composition of their components two weeks ago. This is fine, as we'll be ditching it in favor of a hand sprayer, so, again, I'm not angry.

Then, there's the sink faucet setup...

Oh, the faucet spout itself is beautiful, sleek, chromed brass of a size and shape that could probably bring down an elk. The fact that the tub spout bears no resemblance to the sink spout in any way despite being from the same "Portland" family of Price Pfister plumbing spouts--not even the drain plugs match--does mystify and annoy me. Again, though, not a deal-breaker and at least the sink faucet handles do match the water lever handle of the tub.

(Stands up, adjusts microphone)

As to the handles themselves, they are also composed of heavy brass. The same, however, cannot be said for the bodies directly beneath the actual physical handles. They are--all together now--chrome-coated EFFING plastic.

Now, I will grant that no one will ever notice that the bodies are plastic because people touch the handles and not the bodies. Also, I'm not concerned with the plastic not being strong enough because the place within the body where the handle connects to the actual valve of the sink (the valve stem) is brass and directly molded with the handle itself and therefore not in danger of breaking like cheap-ass plastic might.

This matters not, for I am still angry with Price Pfister. Why? Because when we phoned Price Pfister two weeks ago to ask them about the tub components and their status as being A) Metal, or B) Not Metal, we also asked about the sink components and, with the exception of the shower head, we were told that all components in both sets met the conditions of A).

All metal. Not half-metal. Not three-quarters metal. Not 19 seventy-fifths metal. ALL. METAL.

A return visit to Price Pfister's site reveals even less description about the composition of the faucet components than your average retail site. In fact, on their main page for the faucet, the only part mentioned to be metal is the popup for the drain plug. If you dig around in some of the downloadable .pdf docs it also mentions the lever handles are metal. Plastic doesn't come up as a subject in the Specification Submittals, the Parts Explosion, the Installation Dimensions, nor the Instruction Sheet. NOTHING! (I suspect some of the Code Compliances mentioned in the Parts Explosion might be layered there to somehow imply the presence of plastic. Too bad I'm not a contractor and don't know those codes.)

Another return visit to the site where I bought the sink setup, shows that the handles are described as being metal. And because they ARE metal, I guess I'm not supposed to be able to argue with it. I mean, they are. The handles themselves ARE METAL. I mean just because the handles are described as being made of metal and the handles turn out to be actually made of metal, why on earth should I therefore jump to the conclusion that the handle bodies, which are to me inarguably PART OF THE HANDLE and which clearly looks to be one single cast piece of metal in the picture, are ACTUALLY MADE OF METAL?!!!!!

Sure, the partially metal faucet handle will probably work just as good if not better than one completely made of metal. I DON'T CARE!! I'm the guy who's gone the extra mile to be a good consumer, here. When the usual sources failed to provide the needed information, I phoned the MANUFACTURER and then they too failed me. But the fact that I had to phone them at all is the real crime. How hard is it to list what your shit is made of? The vagueness of the description on the part of not only Price Pfister but nearly every online retail company I've looked at while shopping around, strikes me as an ass-covering move. They hope you'll go ahead and buy the chrome faucet set that they've been able to make more cheaply by using plastic for some parts, but they know that you probably don't want those plastic parts so they just don't list the composition of ANYTHING substantial so you can't accuse them of lying. (C'mon, Price Pfister, you list the EFFING popup as being metal but not the faucet?)

I tell you, it's a conspiracy against DECENCY!!!! What the hell kind of cheap-ass, fast-food culture, corner-cutting (nay, corner-violently-SEVERING), customer-deceiving world are we living in where THIS kind of thing is standard operating procedure?!!

Pfuck a monkey!!!

(Breathes heavy)
(Goes away and takes long walk and plays "stick" with dog)
(Comes back)

After penning the above and getting good and worked up about it, I realized I didn't really have anywhere to go with this story beyond that. We've waited so long for all these parts to come in and can't really install the tub without some of them. Because of that, I'm pretty sure we're both willing to suck it up and get over the plastic handle-bodies just to get the project moving again. But while I'm willing to get over it, I can't just let it go--if that makes sense.

I decided to phone Price Pfister again to let them know they had a very unhappy customer due to what I'm calling The Deceptive Practices of the Plumbing-Fitting Industry in Which They are Clearly Willing Participants. I doubted it would do any good, but at least my complaint would be heard by someone who might be able to roll it uphill to those responsible for the situation.

I spoke to a nice lady in customer service and politely and calmly told her the chain of events that led me to call, spelling out how we'd first called Price Pfister about component composition before ordering two weeks ago. She asked again what model I was talking about. I told her.

"Oh, no, those are made of plastic," she said, referring to the handle bodies. I conceded that she was correct, they were plastic, but noted again for her that this is not what Price Pfister had told me two weeks previously, nor was it reflected in ANY of the documentation available on their site nor any retail site I've found so far.

The customer care rep then explained that "everybody" makes those parts out of plastic.

"Not Delta," I told her. In fact, the faucet handles were about the only thing Delta had gotten right.

The customer care rep then asked to clarify that my basic complaint was that I didn't want faucet handle bodies made out of chrome-coated plastic. I replied that no, I did not, nor did I want any components made of chrome-coated plastic. She then asked if I had made any attempt to look at my choice of faucet set in a store to test and see what they were made of before ordering. I explained that I had indeed gone to Lowes to do exactly this but that the Portland model was not sold at my local store, hence why I had phoned Price Pfister to ask in the first place. (I've since been back to Lowes and found that all the Price Pfister faucets on display had completely metal handles. Apparently my set is the odd man out.)

The rep then tried to explain again that it was far more common these days for companies to manufacturer components out of plastic. I told her that I understood this and had had many problems finding ones who didn't--hence, again, why I had PHONED THE MANUFACTURER to ask in advance of ordering.

The phone rep then started up again on the commonality of chrome-coated plastic, so I had to interrupt her.

"Ma'am, as far as I'm concerned, Price Pfister is completely free to make faucet handles out of whatever materials they so desire. I just really REALLY prefer it greatly if they would make note of which parts are plastic on their website when they do and that they don't tell me plastic parts are made of metal when I call and ask them point blank."

The customer care rep, adopting an appeasing tone, agreed wholeheartedly that my complaint was a good one. She could see from her own display that this was indeed the case, the website didn't mention it, but she didn't know why. However, she assured me that she would shortly alert her supervisor about it. He couldn't do anything about it himself, of course, but he could pass the word along to those above him, who could then pass the word along to those who who could make decisions and maybe, just maybe, they would do something about changing the website. She also admitted that it didn't speak well of Price Pfister customer service if their representatives were giving out false information. Mine, she assured me, was a valid point. After reiterating all of the above twice more, she paused and I was finally able to bid her good day.

It was not a satisfying call. In fact, it left me feeling like I'm the only person this matters to. And maybe I am. I mean, looking around my office now, I see an awful lot of plastic, some of it even chrome-coated. None of it's cracking and flying apart. It holds up, it's sturdy and will be around long after we're all dead. Why should it matter?

It matters because it's not what I wanted, it's not what I was told I'd get when I asked, it's therefore not what I paid for and to my mind it's not right.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Old Coke Vs. New Coke (a.k.a. "Juice Vs. High Fructose Cornhole Syrup")

If you follow health trends like I do, (i.e., barely, but if I'm beat in the face with something I might pay attention) you've probably noticed something of a backlash against high-fructose corn syrup in recent years. Just Google the term and you'll find loads of sites that decry its existence, claim that it's Devil Squeezings, cite studies that claim it's addictive, that it causes increased cases of diabetes and any number of other ailments, that it's being crammed into millions of common products on the market, many of which you wouldn't even expect to find sugar in to begin with, but especially in processed and fast foods, and is therefore contributing greatly to our national obesity crisis, etc.

Naturally, the National Corn-Growers Association isn't fond of such claims, so they've in turn funded a few of their own studies on the matter to try and prove the old studies (which are, in turn, no doubt funded by the sugar industry) wrong. And they've used the results of said new studies to help ramp up a backlash propaganda campaign against the backlash propaganda campaign. You might have seen the ads on TV. They all go something like this...

BRAINLESS AVERAGE GUY-- Hey, don't you try and make me eat that tasty-looking popsicle! It's loaded with high-fructose corn syrup!

OBVIOUSLY WISE GIRL-- Yeah? And?

BRAINLESS AVERAGE GUY-- (Stammers for half an hour before saying) Duhhhhhhrrrrr... I dun't knoOOOw. (Drools on self) Isn't it supposed to be evil?

OBVIOUSLY WISE GIRL-- (Pats him on shoulder) Silly, boy. Don't you know that corn-industry studies have now shown that high-fructose corn syrup is no more evil than sugar? In fact, the studies show it's exactly as bad for you as sugar. That means that even though high-fructose corn syrup may be addicting our kids, making them fatties, destroying the country and killing us all slowly, at least it's doing it cheaper. Now eat this damn popsicle, but only in moderation.

BRAINLESS AVERAGE GUY-- You only brought the one?

OBVIOUSLY WISE GIRL-- Sure.

BRAINLESS AVERAGE GUY-- Skank whore! (*SLAP*)

(That's not verbatim, but I think it's basically what they mean.)

As you may have guessed, I come down on the High-Fructose Cornhole Syrup equaling Devil Squeezings side of the issue, but not really because it's destroying the country (though I confess I suspect it of doing so, studies be damned). No, my hatred for high-fructose cornhole syrup comes from two different directions. Direction one: much like my hatred for chrome-coated plastic trying to pass for metal, I hate high-fructose corn syrup because it's processed crap trying to pass for cane sugar--which has been killing us naturally for hundreds of years the way God intended. Direction Two: when compared to actual cane sugar, I think high fructose corn syrup tastes like duck bladders. (Oh, those sweet, sweet duck bladders.) As evidence of this, I present to you my Coca Cola argument.

According to Wikipedia, Coca Cola has been using high-fructose corn syrup as the sweetener for Coke since 1985 when it was introduced as part of the formula for New Coke, during that infamous campaign. I was 13 at the time, which means I'd been consuming sugar-based Coke for nearly that many years--usually out of nifty, small, green, glass bottles. At the time I claimed not to like New Coke because it was too sweet and I switched exclusively to Diet Coke. (Ironically, it turns out New Coke was basically the same formula used for Diet Coke but sweetened with HFCHS instead of NutraSweet. I didn't know that, then, though.) Even after they brought back Coca Cola Classic, my taste for the stuff began to wane and I soon returned to drinking Diet Coke, (the formaldehyde produced by the breakdown of NutraSweet in which has been slowly embalming me ever since). Little did I know that while Coke Classic returned to the previous formula, it was no longer sweetened with sugar but with HFCS.

I can't say that high-fructose corn syrup was the cause of the decline in my consumption of plain Coca Cola. I didn't consciously notice any difference in the taste. Coca Cola with sugar simply became another of the many things that disappear from our collective culinary life that we don't notice on a conscious level, (like McDonald's French Fries fried in pure lard--mmmm, what I would give for a super-sized sleeve of those right now.)

With the big switch to HFCHS happening so long ago, a great many people in this country have never tasted the glory that is sugar-based Coca Cola. Notice I said "this country," because Coca Cola in other countries, particularly Mexico, is still produced using sugar. In fact, on an episode of Smodcast, Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier mentioned that a person could still find Coca Cola containing sugar by shopping at primarily-Hispanic super-markets in Southern California. I filed that information in the back of my mind in case I ever find myself in the big C.A. again, which isn't unlikely, being as how I was born there.

Months passed.

One day, while shopping in my local Kroger, what did I happen to spy on a non-beverage-related aisle but several small green glass bottles of Coca Cola. At first, I couldn't figure out why they had been shelved there, until I noticed I was in the International Foods Aisle, specifically the Mexican food shelf. Could it be? Yes, yes, it could! I picked up one of the bottles and found affixed to it a special nutritional information sticker in both English and Spanish that listed its ingredients, one of which was sugar, none of which was high-fructose cornhole syrup. I realized I was holding in my hand a time-capsule of goodness I hadn't tasted in 23 years!

I immediately bought two of them, hauled them home and presented one to the wife. The wife poured her treasure over ice and enjoyed it in a glass. I drank mine straight from the green bottle.

Now I won't wax too nostalgic and claim that I was instantly transported back into my ten-year old body by the experience, but it was still pretty amazing. I didn't do a taste test, or anything, but it did seem to be a flavor combination that I haven't experienced in quite some time. It was like an unexpected encounter with an old and much-missed friend.

So if you too are older than dirt and would like to sample a small piece of the lost days of yore, I recommend keeping eyes peeled down the international aisle of your local grocery store. And if you're a punk kid, do the same and experience something you might not have missed has our generation not been shafted by corporate America.

Arr Bafffroom Adwenshur, Pahrt Fo-ruh

So after we got the bathroom pretty much torn out to our satisfaction, we went ahead and ordered a new drain system for the new tub (cause Kohler wants it that way) as well as new fixtures for both the tub/shower and the sink/vanity. Really, we should have done all that back when we ordered the tub and toilet, but the whole project just didn't seem real enough until they were in hand.

We decided to go with chrome fixtures, which we thought would look good with the white tub, white toilet, white vanity and white subway tile we plan to use on the tub walls. (Our plan is to go with a creamier colored tile for the floor, though tiling in general is still a ways down the line at this stage.) So I dug around on the `net and found some chrome fixtures I liked by Delta in their "Leland" line. They looked old-fashioned enough, but with a bit of a curve to them that spoke to their non-vintage roots. We ordered them through Faucet.com and, amazingly enough, they came with free shipping and were actually in our possession the very next day, having been shipped from a supplier in Virginia.

The sink faucets set was beautiful all around and were just the sort of big old, shiny, solid brass fittings with a satisfying heft we were going for. The Delta "Leland" tub/shower set, however, lacked almost all of that. Oh, they looked nice enough, but both the shower spout and the tub spout were composed of chrome-coated plastic, reducing their coolness factor dramatically. Now, I don't guess I really expected the shower head to be solid brass, but it should at least have been a thinner, lighter metal of some sort. The tub spout, on the other, had no excuse at all. In my opinion, it should have been the same solid, heavy, chrome-coated brass as the sink spout, but the only part of it that was metal was the diverter knob. And the only piece in the entire shower trim kit that was indeed heavy brass was the water flow handle.

I immediately went to Faucet.com and checked the entry. No where in it is there any indication that either the tub spout or shower head are anything but metal. Granted, the only part the entry specifying any part of the system as being composed of metal was the water flow lever handle. Even when you took a look at the product specifications .pdf, written by Delta themselves, under the Standard Specifications section the phrase "Solid Brass Fabricated Body" is listed. What exactly this description applies to is not readily evident, until you look at the other items in the list and realize it's only describing the water flow lever. There are no descriptions of the tub spout nor the shower head, nor their composition in the entire document. One is left with little recourse but to assume that they are as metal as they appear to be in the pictures.

Now, I don't know if this omission in the text is Faucet.com's fault. Frankly, I think Delta is to blame as they're the ones supplying all the item descriptions on their faucets. But we were still pissed off enough to call up Faucet.com and ask them, "What's the deal?" The person we spoke with seemed astounded that we would have assumed a chrome-coated, apparently metal faucet was actually made of metal. He also seemed mystified that anyone might expect their online entry to actually specify the composition of any of the parts. In the end, though, he did offer to take everything back and issue a refund. He even said he would waive Faucet.com's usual 15 percent restocking fee, (a fee which, while listed on their website in the Returns & Cancellations page, to me flies in the face of their Satisfaction Guaranteed page where they promise "no surprises").

Next we phoned Delta and asked them "What gives?" They too seemed perplexed that we would assume a shiny, chrome-coated, metallic-looking tub spout would not be made of plastic. Furthermore, they said they were unaware of any other tub manufacturer that actually made metal tub spouts. Horse-Effing-Ess!

True to their word, though, within hours we received an email from Faucet.com with a Return Number we were supposed to include with our faucets when we sent them back. Infuriatingly, in their comments section, it noted: "Customer to return, waiving restock as customer upset because components were plastic and they were not aware of that." I was tempted to write in: "Customer was not aware components were plastic because YOU JAINKEE, MONKEY-EFFING BASTARDS DIDN'T EFFING TELL US!!" but refrained.

So there we sat, feeling angry and betrayed. The trouble was, we couldn't quite tell if we'd been betrayed by Delta, Faucets.com or by our own lack of knowledge of faucet manufacturer standard terminology. Perhaps it was normal to expect anything not specified as being metal to be made of plastic. After all, the Leland sink faucet entry had spelled out that it was made of solid brass. Looking around at other faucet sites, the vaguery continued. Even somewhat higher end brands such as Price Pfister and Kohler didn't seem to specify component composition. Were they plastic too? And, furthermore, if all manufacturers worded things this way, was this some sort of conspiracy to get us to shell out good money for plastic?

(For the record, I'm sure the plastic tub spout would have worked perfectly well. If yours is plastic, then go with God. My beef isn't really that plastic faucets don't function exactly the same as metal ones, but that I really wanted a metal one, thought I'd ordered one and felt as though I was given the bait and switch by The Man yet again. That and I also admit to a prejudice against chrome-coated plastic on a conceptual-level. I can't stand just about any "faux" item manufactured of cheap materials designed to appear of higher quality--i.e. Cubic Zirconium, fake brick sheeting, pleather, Paris Hilton, etc. Just makes me angry. Plus, when I was a kid, any toy I had made of chrome-coated plastic wound up breaking prematurely because that particular mix of plastic was always far more brittle than regular, rubberier plastic. I mean, did anyone out there actually own a Super Powers Brainiac action figure that didn't have an arm eventually break off?! [Little known fact: Brainiac can't kick without arms.])

To assuage my paranoia, the following day I headed to Lowes to have a look at their tub spouts, figuring I'd be able to touch a few and tell which ones were made of what. Imagine, if you will, the chill that ran up my spine when I saw that that each and every tub/shower trim display was located on the upper most tiers of Lowes' gigantic shelves, well out of reach of the average human being. And the few boxed sets of them stocked on shelves below were sealed in a double-layer of thick plastic packing straps, preventing me from simply opening the box to inspect.

IT WAS A CONSPIRACY!

Before I could commandeer one of Lowes' giant rolling staircases (the kind with signs on it telling customers to stay the hell off of it), and touch all the display models anyway, the wife phoned and said she had a five second window in which to go to lunch and asked if I wanted to join her.

Over lunch, I told her of my suspicions of conspiracy and that I thought Price Pfister might be in on it, too. I'd seen some of their tub spouts that I liked the design of, but they were suspiciously higher on the shelves than the Delta spouts. She seemed dubious, but couldn't argue so much in the face of my evidence. After lunch, we phoned Price Pfister and asked them point blank if their tub spouts, specifically the Portland model, were metal. They said they were and seemed surprised that we had to ask. We explained that Delta's weren't and that they'd told us no one made them of metal. Price Pfister said they were surprised at this, too. They didn't go so far as to call Delta a bunch of jainkee monkey-effing bastards, but we could tell they were thinking it. And later, when perusing Price Pfister's site, I noticed that they did call attention to the metal construction of the tub spout and lever, but noted that the shower head was "decorative," indicating to me that it was chrome coated plastic.

We ordered the Price Pfister Portland trim set, after all. It might have a decorative shower head, but I don't care because we were probably going to replace that with a hand-sprayer anyway. I even found a set very cheap on ebay. I won that auction a week ago. We're still waiting for it to arrive.

Awur Baffroom Advenchur, Part Free

Tub and terlet in hand, we had no more excuse for not starting the work on the bathroom itself, which meant tearing out all the old crappy things we didn't like, such as the old tub/shower, the terlet, the vanity and, eventually, the 80's above-sink makeup lights. (Oh, and the super crappy rigged doorknob setup, as pictured at right, the only explanation for which I can imagine is that some genius locked themselves out of the bathroom at some point and had to cut the original knob out of the door in order to get back in. Not to say that I haven't done nearly this very thing since moving in, but I at least had the good sense to climb in a window after failing to pick the lock from the other side of the bedroom door.)

The crappy shimmed up vanity was the first to go and was easy enough to remove. Its departure left a vanity-shaped section of wallpaper exposed, once again showcasing the half-assedness of one or more sets of the previous asshole owners of our home. (Can't really say I would have done things much differently, but that doesn't diminish their assholity.) We hauled all the bits of it out to the back deck, except for the cabinet itself,which I put in the garage for future incorporation into my super-cool garage tool bench setup.

Next up, we began the removal of the tub. We knew this would be tricky, because it's not like you can just pick up the tub and haul it out, what with it being drywalled into place, hooked into the plumbing and likely glued to the subflooring beneath. Not knowing the best way to otherwise do things, we decided the easiest method was to demo the whole thing using a sawsall. And this we did, being careful not to cut through studs and floor and wiring. It was slow going, one piece at a time, but, as you can see from the accompanying pictures, we took her out to the studs.

The truly unsettling part of all this, however, is that with each piece of tub we removed, we exposed another section of the inner walls of the bathroom and the evidence of a one time mouse occupation there. We saw no actual mice, but their leavings were numerous and disturbing. We were glad to have respirators, so as to breathe as little of the mouse-poo dust as we could. Previous owners, or perhaps the contractors that built the place, had tried to seal up a hole in the subflooring where the pipes entered the room from the crawlspace beneath our house, but some of the screening had been damaged or eaten through, allowing the mice access. The good news is that most of the subflooring looked pretty good, but there were a couple of spots that would need to be replaced.

Our overall plan was to replace the sections of subflooring we needed to, put down some concrete planking atop that, seal it, install the tub, put up more concrete planking around the tub, seal it too, patch some drywall, tile the walls above the tub, tile the floor, install the new toilet, install the new vanity and we'd be home free for a new bathroom. Of course, accomplishing all of the above would have taken us a goodly amount of time, even if things had run exactly to plan. Naturally, they haven't.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Kitty Update

Avie went in for her "female troubles" surgery this past Tuesday. Everything ultimately went all right, except that even though she had stopped with the constant loud screaming four days previous, she turned out to still be in heat. Cost an extra $24, but well worth it to get this taken care of finally. At five weeks in heat, there might not have been an end in sight.

We brought her home and kept her warm and mildly fed, as per instructions. She was still pretty loopy from her medicine and wandered around in a drunken state, frequently falling over with no provocation, which I found both sad and hilarious. For the first couple of days we kept her separated from Sadie, because the dog plays rough and likes to chase the cat. The cat likes to be chased, too, and is usually the instigator, but we can't risk an accidental pounce from the dog popping stitches or worse. So we kept Avie secure in the hall bedroom for the first couple of days and have now started to introduce her back into the general population, always with an eye in Sadie's direction to prevent trouble. Thus far, it's working quite well and Avie is her usual self once again with no real sign of pain or discomfort.

Our Baffroom Advenshure, Part Too

Our opening salvo in our war against our crappy master bathroom was to order a new tub and toilet. We didn't want the full one-piece shower/tub unit because they are almost universally no good. We also didn't want the tub with the massaging hot tub jets, cause as soothing as they might be they're also not the easiest things to clean and have much potential for leakage.

We chose a large, white, acrylic tub both comfortably wide and deep and with an upper drain as close to the top rim so as to allow maximum soakage potential. Toilet, likewise. And we ordered them from a national online big-box retailer that offered free shipping on both items. (We thought this was astounding, as we expected shipping on a tub and toilet set to be pretty nasty. Further confusing the issue was the fact that their site mentioned nothing about free shipping, leading us to believe it was a mistake. After a call to their headquarters and a day of research on their part, revealed that it did not seem to be a mistake and we were advised by the company to take advantage of it before they came to their senses.) Despite the unfortunate problems that followed upon delivery of one of the items--again, unrelated to any shipping charges, which remained free--I will refrain from naming this company here as they went above and beyond the call to make things right for us.

The toilet was first to arrive. One of the boxes looked to have sustained some damage in transport, so we carefully photographed it before opening it. The toilet was fine. As solid a shitter as you'd hope to get and pretty comfy-looking, even minus the seat. A week later, the tub arrived.

With DHL down the bankruptcy tubes, a number of smaller delivery companies have jumped in to take up the slack. I suspect the folks that delivered our tub fell into this category, because they seemed very very very eager to please. They phoned me up the morning of delivery to let me know they were planning to do so, asked if noonish would be good and got directions to the house. And despite the fact that some assclown recently ran over the one street sign at the entrance to my neighborhood, the driver found the place in good time.

At the very start of our interaction, the driver was very careful to give me a card which explained that their service was only interested in complete and utter customer satisfaction. Furthermore, they might phone me up in a few days to do a customer survey so I could rate my experience with them on a 1 to 10 scale. The text indicated that they would not be pleased with anything less than a 10. This might explain why the driver seemed almost terrified of me from the start. He was all nervous smiles and forced amiable small-talk, always with an eye in my direction for any sign of utter customer dissatisfaction. After giving me his card, he passed me a delivery sheet and showed me where to sign and noted there was an additional place to sign if I didn't want to inspect the tub before he left. He then carefully unloaded the massive tub box, wheeled it into the garage and placed it where I asked.

The box looked perfect, with barely a nick in it. I went ahead and popped the staples on it and opened the flaps to reveal my new tub.

"Well, that's looks like a tub," I said. At first glance, it seemed to be in pristine condition and was far wider and deeper than the one it was to replace. I shook the driver's hand and, relieved, he climbed into his van and set about doing his side of the paperwork.

As I walked back into the garage, though, I noticed something off about one end of the tub. At the end where I had been standing when I opened the box, there seemed to be a goodly chunk missing from the edge of the tub itself. Upon closer inspection, I could see that, yep, the edges were not smooth on that side at all. The missing bits didn't seem to be broken off, but just not fully formed, as as though something had gone wrong in the molding process. (Click on the image at right to see the illuminated issue.) It struck me as possible that the incomplete edge would eventually be covered by wall-board or tile, but I didn't like the idea of paying what we paid for that tub and having bits of it missing. Also, I knew the wife would never stand for it, so I'd better take care of it now.

I went out to the van and gestured to the driver. Nervously, he opened his door. I told him I didn't know what his procedure would be, but that I was pretty sure I needed to send the tub back as it was damaged. This was maybe a poor choice of words on my part, because from the man's expression I think he nearly wet his pants. His eyes shot wide and he looked very dismayed.

"No, no," I said in soothing tones. "I'm pretty sure it wasn't damaged in delivery. It looks like something just probably went wrong at the factory."

We went back and looked at the tub and the man agreed it was not complete. I asked if he could hang on while I called up the big box store and asked what to do. Big Box was very helpful, told me I could refuse delivery on it and they would refund my money. They then arranged for a reorder on the same model tub at a 10 percent discount, complete with free shipping.

Two weeks later, the same nervous driver arrived, gave me another copy of his company's delivery-service-mandate, ever-so-gingerly removed the new tub box from his van and then seemed worried that his hand-truck might not be gentle-enough to wheel it into the garage. To ease his dilemma, I offered to help carry it inside and assured him, again, that the previous problems had not been his fault in the slightest. Upon opening the box, my new tub was revealed to be gleaming and perfect. The driver seemed relieved, particularly after I checked the Accepts Delivery box on his form.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Our Baffroom Adventure Part Wun

Things were flowing a little too smoothly around the House in Borderland, so the wife and I have decided to stir things up a bit by putting in a bathroom. Granted we already have a bathroom--two of them, really--but we hate them both with an emotion bordering on the next county over from passion. They are the two rooms in the house that exemplify the levels of quarter-assedness employed by one or more previous asshole owners of our house in "sprucing things up" in order to make the place more palatable to buyers. (I like to imagine them watching a weekend marathon of Designed to Sell on HGTV, only to learn that their DVR left off the last ten minutes of every show--yet, they decided to barrel through the projects anyway.)

For instance, some previous owner, either through intent or neglect, purchased a double vanity sink top that doesn't actually fit into the dimensions of the hall bathroom. Did this stop them? Nope. They just chiseled a slot into the wall, inserted one end of the vanity into it, drywalled around it and didn't bother to seal it afterward, leaving a slight crack at the seam. (This is the same bathroom, mind you, that the previous owners hired a team of blind rhesus monkeys to slap white paint on in seemingly random blotches.)

The master bathroom was even worse. Beyond the shade of Salmon the patched, spackled but not-entirely-sanded walls were adorned with, the previous owners saw installed a single vanity set up using as few 90 degree angles as they could get away with. Even though the floor is level, the previous owners somehow thought their vanity wasn't, so they shored up the front of it by putting shims between the sinktop and the cabinet beneath. As you can see from the picture of the full sink below, this didn't actually help at all.

The toilet has had a number of problems with flushing and running water forever afterward. Most of this could be fixed by gutting it and installing new toilet innards, but we don't really like the color of it. As for the fiberglass tub/shower unit, it wasn't in terrible shape, but we hated it all the same because it was too small for anyone but a five year old to comfortably have a soak in and it was the same color as the toilet.

We decided to tackle this bathroom first, knowing full well that we'd pretty much have to rip the whole thing out, tub, terlet, fixtures, most-likely drywall, and all. Nevermind that neither of us has ever done this sort of thing before, that's why they have the DIY network. Plus, the wife possesses more home-improvement skills than the average human and I have power tools. Where could we go wrong?

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Small Deaths #3: Something Fishy This Way Came

(An ongoing pictorial chronicling the small animals my dog Sadie has murdered during the course of her life. Not for the faint of heart.)

The outer skin of formerly stuffed fish that also once contained a motion-activated plastic ball that, when smacked upon the ground, would vibrate violently and broadcast an unnecessarily loud and lengthy set of chaotic noises accompanied by a sped-up, tinny version of the song "What I Like About You" by the Romantics.

It is seen here partially buried in a shallow grave.

The dog loved it dearly. We do not miss it.

At left, a photo of the murderer of the formerly stuffed fish, returned to further molest the corpse before ultimately burying it.

Impending Plan to Kick Glen Frey in his Junk.

Lordy mercy.

The vet wasn't kidding when he said Avie might take three weeks to come out of heat. If anything, he was underestimating the situation. In the past four weeks, this cat has gone into heat THREE TIMES--that's three, count `em, three separate four day sessions of the loudest, most painful-sounding caterwauling you'd ever love to avoid hearing, broken up by three days of relative silence in between. I don't remember Winston EVER being this bad.

After the second heat-session began, the wife asked if I'd made the appointment yet to get her fixed.

"No, not yet," I said, then noting that the vet had suggested we wait the full three weeks before doing so.

"Make. The. Appointment."

So I did. In fact, the appointment was scheduled to have taken place this morning at 8:30, but because the cat went into heat again five days ago and has not yet come out of it we've had to reschedule. Actually, let me rephrase that, because the conversation that actually took place when I phoned the vet's office yesterday to ask them what we needed to do went something like this...

ME-- Hey, my cat is scheduled to be spayed tomorrow morning, but she's gone back into heat. What do we need to do?

VET PHONE ANSWERING PERSON-- Oh, that's okay. They can spay her even if she's in heat, it just costs a little more.

What? WHAT? WHAT?!!! They could have spayed her even if she's in heat all this time and this is the first I'm hearing about it?!! We're talking four weeks of frequent, spine-wrenching, sleep-piercing--nay, sleep IMPALING--squalls, not to mention occasional heat-spawned urinary errors in judgment (the most recent of which occurred ON MY EFFING ELECTRIC BLANKET!!!!) and that all could have been negated 28 days ago? EFF!!!

Turns out what the vet person meant is that the surgery can still occur even if a cat is in heat, it's just more complicated to do. For one thing, they won't be able to tell if the cat is in heat until they "get in there" and see the uterus for themselves. After that, it's just a matter of it being a more complicated surgery, I guess due to the attending inflamation, which would cost an additional $17 to $39 to accomplish. The vet person assured me, though, that it would not be more complicated for the cat herself, a point I wasn't sure if I entirely bought.

Rather than subject the cat to any potential complication, I opted to just reschedule the surgery for next week--a decision I lived to regret after she kept us up half the night with her loud and electric-blanket-soiling antics, not to mention a spot of cat piss I found in the living room that had been soaking in for who knows how long.

So we've another week to wait this out. Hopefully the heat session she's in now is the last one and hopefully we're on the final day of it.

Small Deaths #2: Mr. Bee-Natural

(An ongoing pictorial chronicling the small animals my dog Sadie has murdered during the course of her life. Not for the faint of heart.)

The sad, wingless corpse of a formerly stuffed bumble-bee, no doubt genetically mutated to gargantuan size using reptilian growth hormones.

Cornhole scraper included for scale.

Small Deaths #1: Punk Cow 3.0

(An ongoing pictorial chronicling the small animals my dog Sadie has murdered during the course of her life. Not for the faint of heart.)

At left, the corpse of Punk Cow 3.0.

As its name suggests, there were two previous Punk Cows, both beloved by Sadie though ultimately killed by her. The first was killed by neglect, after Sadie left him outside and we neglected to bring him back in. Eventually, rain-soaked and moldy, he departed this mortal coil for a garbage heap coil.

His replacement, Punk Cow 2.0, was wily and able to survive for several months despite frequent maulings. Exactly one day after we noted aloud how remarkable it was that Punk Cow had survived while far tougher toys had not, Sadie bit open his nose, disemboweled him of both his stuffing and his squeaker and left him for dead.

Pictured above is his far shorter-lived third replacement, who lasted barely a week.