Is there someone else living here too?/part 4 - The End

So, pretty much four months. From when I discovered the water leak to it was all taken care of. Most winter and the entire spring.

Some weeks ago Bengt returned to check if the construction fan blowing hot air in under my kitchen floor, transporting the humid air from there to my fire place, had done it’s job. It had! He found that all the wood, as far as he and his instruments could reach was dry, and I was finally safe! I can’t even put in words how happy I was to hear that. I couldn’t quite take it in.

Now, the reason for the leak was the outflow from the dish washer which was clogged up. It was placed in the back of a cabinet next to the dish washer and I didn’t even know it was there. And I felt really uncomfortable putting the floor and the shelfs in the cabinet back, knowing that wicked thing was back there possibly sabotaging my life again. I started to get really paranoid about this.

So I talked to my plumber. Leif, a good man. We came up with the solution drilling a hole in to the bathroom behind the kitchen cabinet and simply put the dish washer outflow there instead. I pictured it to be an ugly solution ruining the bathroom, esthete as I am, but after this water damage winter I was willing to compromise, I don’t ever want to go through this again.

Leif though, told me he could fix a chrome pipe that would go with the other pipes, and the outflow itself he would put on the sewer going from the sink down in the floor. Again, I pictured something less attractive than my choice would be, but what the heck, as long as it was safe.

That’s when I came to think about it! The sink! The favorite sink which I replaced with a different one when I had a water damage in my upstairs bathroom ten years ago! I knew I wanted to put it in the downstairs one, because the one in there was just very ordinary. It was on Leif’s and my to do list for some years but it just never got done. And the poor fragile thing has been sitting in my would shed among a lot of junk for ten years and I had given up on the plan to get it into the house again.

In my before-life, with a family, I always had plans for the house. Big plans, dreams even, needing money and family consensus. And smaller plans, things I could often take care of myself as I was a strong crafty person with skills my father had taught me well. I saw possibilities for improving most everywhere, I was always aiming for them and had a never ending to do list which I enjoyed. Switching sinks I couldn’t have done myself, but I wasn’t as handicapped as I am now, had more energy and would have made it happen. 

In my after-life I have accepted that neither big or small dreams will happen. I am fully occupied taking care of big or small catastrophes trying to maintain the house as is.

But planning the dish washer outflow solution with Leif I remembered the sink…and the little dream…what if…maybe… Yes, why not?! We weren’t dead sure the wall could carry the long buried dream but I was willing to give it a try.

Tuesday afternoon Bengt was scheduled to come back and finish up his work, and before that the outflow thing needed to be done. Which of course was delayed and happened the same morning. The chimney sweeper accidentally was here as well. And then I had this meeting with my bank in between. Sometimes I feel like my life is a live broadcast with cues having to match perfectly into each other. Click, click, click! A live broadcast life is not for people who don’t do well under pressure and I can’t recommend it.

Anyway, tuesday evening, Bengt had filled the cleaned out and now dry departments under my kitchen floor with new saw dust as insolation and put the floor back. The night mare winter 2015 water damage was dead and gone. Goodbye, and I won’t miss you. No, not a bit. It’s one more thing I have survived.

And in the downstairs bathroom there is the forgotten and dream abandoned oval sink as the crown on the new chrome sewer hiding the dish washer outflow, I am saying you can’t even see it if you are not bending down sticking you head in there! You are opening the door giving the nice sense of something slightly different, but you won’t be able to tell what. I will be the only one knowing what makes you feel good is a shiny sewer under an oval sink, perfectly matching the big round mirror and the little square cabinet on the wall. Just as I pictured it ten years ago.

Now, I won’t give you some positive crap about the water damage hell had to come to fulfill my long gone dream of the sink switch. But standing in my downstairs bathroom experiences the subtile joy of different shapes making a harmony I can come to some reconciliation with this long and horrid winter story.