Tools R Us

I want to know where all those handymen are hiding.

You know the ones....... they show up on decorating shows on the Home & Garden channel.... they look like members of The Village People. Some of them look like they dance on a stage at night after they've been hammering and sawing wood all day long.

Not only do they look good, and speak fluent English, but they can tear down an entire house and rebuild it in seven days, and that includes furniture, carpeting, artwork, and a bowl of fresh red apples on the coffee table.

Those handymen haven't set foot over the state lines in Texas. Oprah may have them up in Chicago working with Nate, but they're not anywhere around here.

You may remember that we had a new shower installed in the master bathroom last year. Lovely. A very nice job. Last week, I noticed that the ceiling of that shower was separating from the sheetrock behind it. Wonderful.

I got on the phone to the contractor who took care of all the work. He sent the marble guys to our house. A little hard to communicate.... I didn't speak enough of their language, they didn't speak enough of mine. But I pointed out the problem, which they could easily see.

"No problem..." they told me, as they set out to fix it.

Fix it they did. And I thought that was the end of it. Till my husband got up there and noticed that by fixing it, they drilled three screws into the faux marble to tighten it into the sheetrock, then filled the holes with grout. "Not acceptable," said my husband.

Back on the phone.... back came the two men with their limited English and their full toolbox. They took out the grout, went to their truck and mixed up some of the faux marble compound, and re-filled the screw-holes with that.

The marble matched up very well. I could live with that, as long as I blocked out the fact that there are now three screw-holes behind the marble patches. My husband had a look-see and said it was "acceptable."

The owner of the marble company was supposed to be here early this morning. I waited till 10:00 before calling the office to ask the girl if he'd be here by noon. "He'll see you around 4:30," she told me.

Ah, yes.... it's nearly 6:00 as I'm typing. No sign of him yet. And I seriously doubt that he's singing and dancing on a stage somewhere.

This isn't the end of the handyman saga. We need to have some work done in the smaller bathroom. The floor and the toilet both need to be replaced, one being a result of the other. It seems that the seal on the commode has cracked, which caused some water to seep underneath the linoleum floor. It isn't that bad right now, but will keep getting worse.

Which, in my book, means replace both now before they get worse. My husband and I were in Home Depot this weekend, and we picked out ceramic tile for that bathroom floor. We also looked at new toilets, which wasn't exactly easy to do. Home Depot had the commodes stored on a shelf that was about 15 feet off the floor..... very hard to see the differences between them if you're only five feet/four inches tall.

We asked one of the Home Depot workers why the toilets were up on shelves so high off the ground. She told us that when they were kept at a lower level, little kids would use them. "Use them for what?"....... "For toilets!" she told us.

This is only the beginning. I will soon have to deal with more handymen as they come and go. The old floor will need to be picked up, the old toilet will need to be removed. Then the new tile floor will be installed, then the new commode. They will have to either replace or repaint the molding around the floor, then of course the doors will have to be repainted to match the molding. One thing always leads to another.

If my handymen looked like The Village People and were being supervised by Oprah's Nate, then this bathroom job would take maybe a day and a half.

The way I see it....... I hope this all gets done by Memorial Day.

All together now: "Y..... M..... C..... A!!!!!"