When I first moved into my current apartment, I was thrilled to finally have my own place. It was the first time in my life I'd gotten a place without roommates, and I was tickled pink that I could do exactly as I wanted. Naturally, the excitement of having such a blank slate meant that I let a lot of minor inconveniences go, but as time wore on and I got accustomed to my own company, I started fixing up some of the more troublesome ones.
One thing in particular that required some pretty speedy fixing was the shower head. I realize that, living in a hispanic neighborhood, I tend to be taller than most people here, but when I moved in, the shower head was literally at chest height. Very handy for cleaning the rest of my body, but absolutely heinous for things like washing my hair and face. When my parents came out this past summer, they helped me change the shower head out for one of those handheld, flexible ones. The height of the new head put the water coming out about 1" above my head- not perfect, but better than before, and I didn't have to kneel down to wash my hair. A livable situation, so I moved on to other projects.
This past week, however, saw most of my other projects finished up, and my attention was once more drawn to this shower situation. One inch really isn't very much clearance for washing hair, since you need to lather up, and rinse it all out, and heaven forbid you want to tilt your head so the water doesn't flow into your eyes. I had noticed that the pipe coming out of the wall to the shower head had been put in kinda backwards, though, so that the longer arm of it was pointing downwards. Now, to someone who has done any kind of math, imaging, drawing, or, well, any application of real world usage of relations, this means that the shower head is lower than it could be, if you flipped it the other way, right?
Being as that I have my own toolbox (and I know how to use it!), I figured I could just flip the pipe around, have an extra 2" of space, and be done with right? Sadly, no dice. Once I'd managed to peel away decades of bad spackling/ putty jobs around the wall cover and get to the pipe, it was firmly rusted in place. Since I didn't want to be held responsible for possibly breaking it an flooding the apartment below me, I figured I'd let maintenance know about it, they could come swap it out real fast and I'd have an ideal shower situation, right? Yeah... right...
I've had run-ins with the maintenance crew around here before, so I should've been better prepared. Two guys show up, and I try to explain (having limited knowledge of spanish, and they of english), what I want done. They look doubtful that it'll actually make a difference, but I insist (thankful that mexican men are raised to do what women tell them, in a domestic situation), and make my first big mistake: I go away and continue working. A couple minutes and much confused spanish later, they call me over and say it won't work, showing me what they've done:
I won't lie, it took a lot of effort not to laugh. I had made all kinds of hand gestures, movements, and explanations showing what I wanted done, and apparently, it just didn't come through. I assure them that no, that won't work, what I want is to swap the two opposite ends of the pipe, and make my second big mistake: I go back to work again. Sure enough, a couple minutes later I get called back again, with more confused spanish saying it still won't work.
I did kinda chuckle at that point, and assured them that no, again, they were right, and that wouldn't work. Please just put it back the way it was, but with this side of the pipe pointing down, and this side of the pipe connected to the wall, thank you very much. Content that this time, they can't possibly get it wrong, I once again go back to work. A couple minutes later, they call me over, and this time they've finally gotten it right. I thank them, and figure the debacle is over, but no.
They'd noticed, in their efforts to "fix" the shower, that there's a fair amount of water that still comes out of the tub faucet when the shower is on. Unfortunately for me, they tried to fix that as well, and only managed to lessen the amount of water that is redirected to the shower head. I thanked them, said not to worry about it, and all but threw them out the door before it ended up like this:
So the end result is that the shower head is now at an acceptable level, but with less water pressure. Sigh. Moreover, the maintenance guys apparently thought it necessary to use metal tools on a plastic connector, so the shower head that I had bought now looks like it went through a war. It hasn't started leaking yet, but it doesn't want to keep its position for an entire shower, so I have to keep adjusting it as time wears on. Lesson learned: take everything remotely breakable away from the vicinity before calling maintenance, and supervise them at every moment. You live, you learn, I guess. Cheers!
UPDATE! I finally got around to replacing the plastic shower arm mount thingy, and found out what happened with the water pressure. They'd not only installed a filter grate behind the connector without telling me, but they'd also managed to over-tighten the connecter so much that they shredded the rubber washer inside it, so tattered shreds of rubber were blocking water flow. Next time I'm definitely supervising them the whole time, grown men or no! Proper water pressure has been restored.
One thing in particular that required some pretty speedy fixing was the shower head. I realize that, living in a hispanic neighborhood, I tend to be taller than most people here, but when I moved in, the shower head was literally at chest height. Very handy for cleaning the rest of my body, but absolutely heinous for things like washing my hair and face. When my parents came out this past summer, they helped me change the shower head out for one of those handheld, flexible ones. The height of the new head put the water coming out about 1" above my head- not perfect, but better than before, and I didn't have to kneel down to wash my hair. A livable situation, so I moved on to other projects.
 |
| No fun for tall people... |
This past week, however, saw most of my other projects finished up, and my attention was once more drawn to this shower situation. One inch really isn't very much clearance for washing hair, since you need to lather up, and rinse it all out, and heaven forbid you want to tilt your head so the water doesn't flow into your eyes. I had noticed that the pipe coming out of the wall to the shower head had been put in kinda backwards, though, so that the longer arm of it was pointing downwards. Now, to someone who has done any kind of math, imaging, drawing, or, well, any application of real world usage of relations, this means that the shower head is lower than it could be, if you flipped it the other way, right?
 |
| Note that one is lower than the other... |
Being as that I have my own toolbox (and I know how to use it!), I figured I could just flip the pipe around, have an extra 2" of space, and be done with right? Sadly, no dice. Once I'd managed to peel away decades of bad spackling/ putty jobs around the wall cover and get to the pipe, it was firmly rusted in place. Since I didn't want to be held responsible for possibly breaking it an flooding the apartment below me, I figured I'd let maintenance know about it, they could come swap it out real fast and I'd have an ideal shower situation, right? Yeah... right...
I've had run-ins with the maintenance crew around here before, so I should've been better prepared. Two guys show up, and I try to explain (having limited knowledge of spanish, and they of english), what I want done. They look doubtful that it'll actually make a difference, but I insist (thankful that mexican men are raised to do what women tell them, in a domestic situation), and make my first big mistake: I go away and continue working. A couple minutes and much confused spanish later, they call me over and say it won't work, showing me what they've done:
I won't lie, it took a lot of effort not to laugh. I had made all kinds of hand gestures, movements, and explanations showing what I wanted done, and apparently, it just didn't come through. I assure them that no, that won't work, what I want is to swap the two opposite ends of the pipe, and make my second big mistake: I go back to work again. Sure enough, a couple minutes later I get called back again, with more confused spanish saying it still won't work.
I did kinda chuckle at that point, and assured them that no, again, they were right, and that wouldn't work. Please just put it back the way it was, but with this side of the pipe pointing down, and this side of the pipe connected to the wall, thank you very much. Content that this time, they can't possibly get it wrong, I once again go back to work. A couple minutes later, they call me over, and this time they've finally gotten it right. I thank them, and figure the debacle is over, but no.
They'd noticed, in their efforts to "fix" the shower, that there's a fair amount of water that still comes out of the tub faucet when the shower is on. Unfortunately for me, they tried to fix that as well, and only managed to lessen the amount of water that is redirected to the shower head. I thanked them, said not to worry about it, and all but threw them out the door before it ended up like this:
So the end result is that the shower head is now at an acceptable level, but with less water pressure. Sigh. Moreover, the maintenance guys apparently thought it necessary to use metal tools on a plastic connector, so the shower head that I had bought now looks like it went through a war. It hasn't started leaking yet, but it doesn't want to keep its position for an entire shower, so I have to keep adjusting it as time wears on. Lesson learned: take everything remotely breakable away from the vicinity before calling maintenance, and supervise them at every moment. You live, you learn, I guess. Cheers!
UPDATE! I finally got around to replacing the plastic shower arm mount thingy, and found out what happened with the water pressure. They'd not only installed a filter grate behind the connector without telling me, but they'd also managed to over-tighten the connecter so much that they shredded the rubber washer inside it, so tattered shreds of rubber were blocking water flow. Next time I'm definitely supervising them the whole time, grown men or no! Proper water pressure has been restored.
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