The Money You Save With DIY

"They are gonna love the surprise!" My inner dialogue was trying to pep me up as I stood in front of the bathroom door, peering inside.

The issues at hand were easy to define, and the solutions seemed clear-cut.

The wall was missing a few tiles, and the shower handle, sink, and flush pipe were leaking to varying degrees. Everything was caked in years of limescale, dirt, and neglect. Everything, except the perfectly functional and neatly polished bidet, fitted tightly between the bathtub and the toilet.

Some fifteen years ago, I shared an apartment with a few housemates. Everything was old, battered, and abused, and although one of the guys' fathers was the owner, we were always struggling to make ends meet.

Some months, we had to choose between food and utilities. Some others, we came into a little extra money and spent it on stupid, useless stuff, as most financially illiterate students would.

This was one of those months.

My friends had left for a hackathon weekend in the south of the country, and I was going to surprise them by fixing the bathroom.

I was bold and resourceful. I could not be stopped.

First, I meticulously assessed the situation.

A long, thin crack was climbing up the pipe between the flush box and the toilet itself; it would need replacing.

All the intended holes in the shower head were clogged with limescale, while new, unintended holes had formed in the plastic as the water looked for an escape route. It would need replacing, too.

I couldn't understand where the sink was leaking from. Something was wrong with the pipes, but they were hidden behind a ceramic foot of sorts. I decided that a pipe wrench, silicone sealant, and duct tape for good luck would have to be enough.

Above the bidet, the wall exhibited a big empty white gap between the blue bathroom tiles, where a heavy metal towel rack had been yanked out under unknown circumstances, carrying the tiles away with it. It would need six new tiles and special glue to install them. I would not buy a new towel rack, but I could try reinstalling the old one.

The bidet was in shiny, perfect condition. The guys loved the bidet.

Everything else would benefit from a heavy-duty limescale remover.

I measured everything, prepared a list, and drove the forty minutes to the DIY store. Since I was saving so much money by doing the job myself, I decided to splurge on a fancier showerhead, one with multiple settings and a pressure-building component that promised to boost water pressure. It looked good and sounded delightful.

As soon as I was back, I got to work.

I realized that the foot of the sink was loose; it served only to conceal the pipes. So I quickly dislodged it, leaving a few scrapes on the lower portion of the sink, and tightened all the visible bolts with my new pipe wrench. I ran the sink, and it didn't leak anymore.

With a bout of satisfaction, I moved on to the next item on the list: soaking everything with limescale remover. Since it had been collecting there for many, many years, I figured it would take a very long soaking to clean things out.

I used half the bottle, carefully glazing every limescale-coated surface: the sink, the floor, the bathtub... undurprisingly, the bidet didn't need any.

While waiting for the product to take effect, I grabbed a butter knife and a hammer and started chiseling away the old tile glue still stuck to the empty portion of the wall. It was hard and painful for my hands, but I kept thinking about the happy faces of my housemates when they'd see the results.

It was my first dabble with chiseling, and a few times the butter knife hit the wall at the wrong angle, breaking bits of the plaster and even the tuff underneath.

"Stupid old houses made of stupid brittle tuff stone", I mutter to myself in between the hammer strokes. I imagined it wouldn't matter much, once the glue covered everything.

When I was done, I vacuumed and polished where needed, applied the tile glue, spread it evenly with the trusted butter knife, and stuck the tiles where they belonged. Last, I attached the tiles that were still glued to the old towel rack. It was beyond me how they managed to cling to each other.

It didn't look amazing, but it already looked so much better.

I felt proud.

Then I wiped away the lime scale remover from every surface. It had done a great job! Even the tub, which used to be a weird cream/brownish color, was now all shiny white!

Awesome!

I went to push the sink's foot back into place... but it wouldn't budge. I tried again, really putting my back into it this time, and an ominous cracking sound begged me to stop.

"Fuck. I'll get to it later."

I moved on to the showerhead. It came off the hose neatly.

"That's a great start!" I thought.

Oh, was I mistaken!

The new shower head could not fit where the old one had disconnected. The new one needed to be screwed on, where the old one had to be awkwardly "pushed in".

I needed to go back to the store and find an adapter.

I was covered in all sorts of dust and dirt, and I wanted so badly to take a shower before leaving the house, but putting the old showerhead back was not an option, since — now that I could see it — it had broken off when I removed it.

I drove to the DIY store again, wearing my dirt as a badge of honor. I bought an adaptor that measured correctly. Once home, I plugged it in and screw the shower head on. It worked like a charm!

I forgot to try running the water... dummie!

I moved to the next and final item on my list, the toilet itself. Turns out, to change the pipe, the whole bowl needed to be removed first.

Easy peasy!

I peeled the old, moldy silicone from the base with the same butter knife and tried lifting the toilet chair.

Not easy peasy at all.

Turns out, in old Italian houses, toilets used to be cemented in place.

Beloved butter knife and hammer in hand, I started chiseling away at the hydraulic cement.

Halfway through, however, my hands couldn't bear it anymore. I was sweaty and caked in all sorts of ancient dirt.

"Time to test that massage mode!"

I climbed into the bath, pulled the shower curtain, hung the shower head over me, and opened the water.

Before I even realized what was going on, it had sprayed everywhere from above the curtain.

Fuck.

I needed to go back to the store and figure out how to fix this leak. But I wanted to shower first, so badly. I felt too disgusting to leave the house. That's when I remembered the duct tape. In those action movies I binge-watched as a child, they would repair everything with duct tape, even people.

So I rolled the base of the shower head with duct tape, abundant amounts of it, and tried again.

Maybe the Italian version is not as good as the American one? Maybe that's what I get for saving money and buying a knock-off brand? Or maybe it was just not the right tool for the job, cause water came out spouting in every direction again, its pressure increased by the layers of tape, and severed the shower head from the hose.

Exasperated, I put it away and resorted to filling the tub via the headless hose. Then, when I slipped my naked, aching body onto the tub's floor, my back and bottom stung as if somebody had just sandpapered them.

"What the hell?"

Turns out, the bath had been coated in creme/beige enamel, a finishing layer that gave it its slickness, and it had been completely eaten away by the limescale remover. If only I had bothered to read the instructions before using it!

With my back and bottom peeled by the tub, I washed myself in an awkward squat, the little unpressurized water gurgling from the headless hose, and headed for the store.

Another couple of hours went by, and I came back with a silicone-based water-repellent grease, a gasket, and hydraulic tape. There went the last of my budget.

Too little, too late.

When I peeled the duct tape off the showerhead, I noticed it had broken through the adapter when I turned on the water earlier. I could not return the showerhead for a cheaper one because of the ugly marks left by the tape and the broken adapter's scraping, and I did not have the money to buy a new one.

Like sucking on a bitter lemon, I pursed my lips and resigned to a few months of squat-bathing by an underpressurized hose.

"At least the rest is good, and this can be fixed for cheap." I tried to cheer myself up before facing the toilet again.

After all the visible cement had been chiseled away, the sanitation unit would still not move. I realized that there must have been cement underneath as well.

"Not a problem!"

Like we say in my country, "If you managed 30, you can manage 31", I was too invested in this to stop now.

So I used my legs to rock it back and forth, like a dentist luxating a rotten molar.

It would gurgle and leak foul fluids, but I was bold and determined. I needed a win after the shower situation. So I squeezed my small frame into the corner, anchoring my back against the wall, ready for a final push with both legs.

I have very strong legs, courtesy of all the walking and squatting.

It would have to surrender to me.

And surrender it did.

The ugly creme-colored throne came loose all at once and flew away from my feet with unexpected speed and strength, as if it were made of paper. I panicked when it crashed into the immaculate bidet with an awful cracking sound.

"Oh no no no no no! Please, God, no!"

I got up, skipped over the empty hole in the floor, and went to check on the toilet.

It looked okay, but when I grabbed its heavy shape, only half of it followed my hands.

"Fuck."

I lifted the other half too, and laid them aside. It would have to be replaced. And that would be expensive.

I wiped the bidet with the sleeve of my shirt, and it looked okay. I could sigh in relief. The guys were obsessed with the bidet.

Suddenly, and unexplicably, the tiles I had so zealously attached to the wall came loose altogether, and the heavy towel rack smashed into the bidet from above.

Was it because I chiseled away portions of the wall, or spread the tile glue too evenly? Maybe because I connected the heavy towel rack too early? Or was it that when the water from the shower head sprayed everywhere, it made the glue moist, so it couldn't resist the vibration of the impact between the two porcelain fixtures?

Probably all of the above.

It didn't matter.

It was too much. With a screeching cry, the front of the bidet cracked and let go. It now stood there, mutilated, silently judging my bad choices.

"Fuck!"

"The guys loved the frigging bidet."

I fell to the floor with a heavy thud, helpless tears rolling out. I was spent, I was done, I was broken. In anger, I shoved the half toilet away from me, and it rolled next to the sink.

That's when I noticed another mistake I made.

The sink's foot was not just for looks. It also supported the weight of the oversized sink. Because I had left it detached for so long, the small pliable pipes succumbed to the sink's weight and got bent. And because they were so old and had already suffered oxidation damage from years of neglected leaks, and because I had tightened everything too diligently, they cracked. Water was now running from under the sink, pooling mercilessly on the floor.

As I looked around to assess the damage, a horrid stench filled the air, together with the sound of flushing water.

In a ghastly realization, I could now see that the hole where the toilet had stood had become an open sewer: we shared that pipe with the whole building.

And every time somebody flushed their toilet from above, we'd get a whiff of their business.