It’s the following Friday, and plumbers still invade my home. But they are doing all good things, and I am grateful!

It took them three days to repipe from galvanized to copper, locating a couple more leaks along the way (these pipes were disintegrating in place!), and then they nicely plastered the two walls they had to open up, filled the trench they had dug in the yard, cleaned up their mess, and moved on to other projects.

Parenthetical note: No one told me how bad the water would taste when I switched from galvanized to copper. It seems like an amazing thing to say that I preferred the taste of water running through rust and minerals built up over 75 years to that running through brand-new copper, but when I asked Richard the plumber about it, he said that it’s not the copper, it’s actually the taste of “flux”—a cream paste they have to use on the pipes before soldering them, which takes a while to wear off/wash away. It’s apparently biodegradable and harmless to ingest, but it made my morning tea undrinkable. I’m ironically using bottled water to drink since the pipes were switched, waiting for the wonky flavor to subside. (Could take weeks!)

After the guys finished all that, they went back under the house to track and repair the gas leaks (two). One was by the water heater in the garage, an easy fix, but the other was actually inside the house, behind the stove, so they had to pull out the stove and cap off the gas until they could replace the line into the house. Given the location, I decided to be proactive and try to get the oven in at the same time, so I called Waadt Appliances (they’re about 1/4-mile from me, and have good prices) and ordered up a new oven just like the old one; unfortunately, I was about six hours too late to get it on the Thursday truck from the warehouse, so it won’t be delivered until next Wednesday. But Richard has fixed the leak and re-hooked up my old one so that I at least have burners on which to cook again!

Today’s other task: Over the course of the three days, Richard observed me using my cane and noted my (lack of) mobility and then took a look at at my (child-height) toilet and said, Why don’t you have a handicapped toilet? I said, Richard, it’s one of the MANY things I’ve been meaning to remedy! He said, Well, why don’t we do it while I’m here? I gave him the go-ahead, and he ordered me one (had to call four different supply houses to find it) so as of this morning I have hopefully wrenched my knees for the final time while attempting to arise after doing my business. This toilet is TALL—in fact, some of my short friends who visit may need a stepstool (just kidding).

Another thing he proposed to do while he was here but on which I didn’t take him up: replacing my tub with a walk-in shower. I do want to do it (since I can no longer lift my heavy legs over the edge of the tub to climb in), but A. I have exploded my savings budget for this year with the repipe, the gas repairs, and the new toilet; and B. I haven’t had a chance to look at design options.

I have been at great pains to keep any changes to this house authentic to the period it was built, so I don’t want one of those cheap-looking all-in-one fiberglass showers, I want to keep tile in and around the shower space and maybe install some bead board (wainscoting) around the rest of the bathroom at the same level as the tile. I also have to consider storage, because my vanity is currently built over/sitting on the outside edge of the bathtub, but the new shower installation will necessitate a pedestal sink instead of the sink built into a vanity and cupboard that I have now. That means I have to find somewhere else in my VERY tiny bathroom to store stuff like cleaning materials, shampoo, toilet paper, and all the other detritus that needs to be close by. Perhaps a cabinet above the toilet? Anyway, I need to spend some time looking at bathroom designs, tile samples, and paint colors, and also find a good cabinetmaker. Sigh. No one ever said that keeping a house in order would be a full-time job, but when you neglect it for 15-20 years, this is the result. Readers take note!

Next Wednesday’s oven delivery will be the last official intrusion for a while, I’m hoping. Well, except for calling the housecleaning crew to vacuum, sweep, and mop up all the traces of footprints of four booted workmen!