Like my title?

True story.

My parent’s bathroom needed remodeling badly because the top was getting moldy (yuck). My dad wanted to hire a friend of his because it would give the guy some work and it would hopefully be cheaper for us. I knew it was a bad idea when I came home and heard that it was two weeks and he still didn’t finish it and had not been coming in for four days. But what can you do, what’s done is done.

Anyway, after the third week or so, my parents didn’t like the progress with the remodeled bathroom so he removed the tiles from the shower and re-did it. Finally, two days ago or so he finished the bathroom and my parents paid him.

Guess who was the first to use the shower? Yes, it was me.

I turned it on, and it worked great. The shower was more roomy, it was clean, new glass doors, it was spiffy. Then as I was nearing the end of my shower, I heard my brother’s flustered voice downstairs. I couldn’t hear what he said but I ran down to look for him and slipped in a huge puddle of water that was then flooding the house. I hit the tiles and drenched the towel I was wrapped in. (Got some nice bruises, by the way.) It was crazy. There was water all over the floor and my brother was running around looking for something. Yep, it was the faulty shower.

When I saw all of the water, I panicked and had no idea what to do except stay frozen in position waiting for my brother to come back into the house (he ran outside attempting to cut off the water supply but failed since we didn’t have a wrench long enough to reach). By the time he came back in he called my dad and told him to rush home.

The shower I was using on the second floor was directly above my brother’s bathroom, where the ceiling literally fell and water rushed down into.

Meanwhile, we tried getting towels and soaking up the water. It was a lost cause because we didn’t have enough towels. So then we looked for brooms and tried to sweep the water out into the garage and then down the driveway. At that time my brother had also called my mom and told her to come home. I started crying pathetically because at the time I felt SO bad and I blamed myself for showering and causing the flood.

My brother was napping while I had been taking a shower and he heard the water falling, but he assumed it was me in the downstairs bathroom. Little did he know, it was water from upstairs falling into his bathroom. He didn’t think much of it until he heard the ceiling fall and water crashing down. Oh man, when he saw that, he said he thought our house was going to flood and be done for. Luckily, it stopped a little after I turned off the shower. But man, if I were in his shoes and saw the huge hole and the water rushing down? I would have fainted. I have realized that I do not fare well under intense and emergency situations (not good). I panic and freeze up. If someone tells me what to do I’m okay, but otherwise I feel so lost. Luckily my brother called my parents…I didn’t even think of that. Shows how much my brain works under emergency situations. If my brother wasn’t home I think I’d just call 911. But boy am I glad he was home…. I don’t think I would have noticed anything until hours after I went downstairs.

Once she got home, she said the best we could do was wring out the towels into a bucket and continue soaking it up. My dad, meanwhile, was trying to get a hold of the guy who remodeled our bathroom, and other friends who were construction and pipe savvy.

Now everything’s fine. Well, not fine because there’s a hole that stretches a few feet in the bathroom’s ceiling and I can see all of the pipes above. But otherwise, the house is drying up and no one’s hurt except for my few bruises.

We should really sue the guy, but it’s a tough situation because he is my dad’s friend and has no insurance. It was a really bad move of my dad to hire him in the first place because he is not a licensed plumber. He does this kind of thing as his job but he is not a true professional with a license. It was a really bad decision to hire him.

But the whole flood incident wasn’t my dad’s fault because he didn’t know this was going to happen. And it wasn’t my fault for showering because if it wasn’t me it would have been someone else.

The dude my dad hired came over today and said he’d fix it, but my dad being the push-over he is with friends and strangers, he didn’t ask for our money back. Honestly, I’m scared. I don’t think he should continue the job and try to “fix” this mess. I think we need to hire a REAL professional… but knowing my dad I don’t think he has the guts to tell him that.

Man, what an event. And all right before my mom, my brother, and I leave for our one week trip in Florida. Hopefully my dad fares well at home okay. We were planning about canceling (despite the fact that we already paid for plane tickets) but my dad said he’d take care of it. I hope so.

What an experience. That’s a story to tell.