by Carrie Classon
“You know,” my mother tells me, “It’s not normal to have a tiled bedroom.”
“It’s not normal to have a flooded bedroom three times in less than two years!” is what I replied.
And it’s true. This latest flood in our bedroom is the third time in 18 months that water has escaped whatever pipe, drain or faucet was supposed to be containing it, in what my husband, Peter, euphemistically refers to as “a water intrusion.” In none of these cases did the leak actually originate in our apartment. This is one of the unmentioned perils of living in a multi-unit building. We don’t just experience our issues; we get issues from everyone above us.
“We should have bought a unit on the top floor,” Peter says. And we could have. A nearly identical condo was for sale on the top floor when we bought ours. But the one on the top floor had newer things that we’d have wanted to rip out, while the condo we bought had much older, original things we ripped out — and felt a lot less guilty doing it. So that was the one we bought. It never occurred to me if we were on the top floor there would be less water available to run down on our heads.
So, after we got back from Mexico this last time and went “Splash! Splash! Splash!” to our bed, one of the first things I said to Peter was, “I’m done with carpeting. I think we should tile the bedroom.”
“Uh-huh,” Peter said.
“And maybe just put a floor drain under the bed.”
“What do you have against the people downstairs?”
I have nothing against the people downstairs. They seem as if they are pretty nice, so we are not putting in a floor drain, although I fully expect some pipe that has never leaked before will eventually leak, and I will be happy the result ends up on my nice, permanent ceramic tile instead of soaking the carpeting once again. But my mother thinks it’s not normal. I remembered my mother’s Swedish relatives who came to visit in the ’80s. They did not think wall-to-wall carpeting was normal. They were concerned it would not be clean. They thought area rugs were the way to go. I reminded my 100% Swedish mother of this, in an attempt to make this whole tiling of the bedroom thing look like a return to my roots.
And, of course, it’s not just Scandinavia. People in tropical climates aren’t as likely to have carpeting. It can get moldy. It is harder to clean. The only really compelling reason to have carpeting in the bedroom is that it is easier on your feet when you hop out of bed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
“The floor can be cold!” my mother reminded me. I’ve decided cold is better than wet.
So now Meshack, our wonderful Kenyan tiler, is back. Meshack’s hours are somewhat relaxed, so we are not exactly sure when the job will be finished. But he did an amazing job on our two bathrooms with the crazy mini tiles I selected (which will give you vertigo if you look at them too long), and he’s doing a great job with this floor as well — which is not quite as jazzy and I’m pretty sure any Scandinavian would approve of.
“Well, you’ll have to get an area rug,” my mother concluded.
And I’m sure we will. But not right away. Not until we go a few months without another “intrusion.”
Till next time,
Carrie
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