Dream Realized, Sort Of

What would an adventure be without a challenge or two? Our dream house was no exception. Although on the surface the place looked great, we soon discovered the truth of the old saw: “Looks can be deceiving.”

As soon as the site manager and his boss left—after a closing ceremony involving signing a document agreeing to have our house photographed and being a reference; and the presentation of two gift jackets (You would have thought we won a golf tournament.) with the builder’s name on them, and the request, jokingly made, that I wear my jacket at all my book signings—we stood basking in our dream. But the basking soon ended.

My first hint that something was amiss began with the weird sound the toilet made when I flushed it. Sort of a gurgling sound like a geyser makes before it erupts. The toilet didn’t erupt. But when I went to wash my hands, I couldn’t get any hot water. Okay, I told myself. The hot water heater just needs to warm up. But after a few minutes I realized it wasn’t getting warmer; it was getting colder. Uh, oh!

My husband ran to the basement and checked the hot water heater. It seemed to be fine, running and hot to the touch. Then he tested the other toilet to see if it too made a gurgling sound. No it didn’t. Great. The water just needed to get flowing through the pipes. Whew!

Just to make sure the toilet was okay, my husband opened the toilet tank lid. That’s weird,” he said, peering down into the tank. “What?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know. “There’s steam coming from the toilet tank.”

I touched the tank. It was hot and sweating. A horrible realization was overtaking me. “You don’t think the plumber switched the hot and cold lines, so you?” I asked my husband, hoping he’d say I was being ridiculous.

Instead he tested every water source. Sure enough—cold was hot, and hot was cold throughout the entire house except for the kitchen faucet.

It was already after 5 p.m. and though we were able to reach the site manager, who dashed over to see if he could do anything, there was nothing he could do. And he couldn’t reach the plumber because the weekend had started for plumbers.

“Well,” he said, “sheepishly, “just remember to turn the faucet on cold when you take a shower.”

“And the toilets?” I asked, steam now coming from me

“Long as there’s no splash, you’ll be okay.” Then he scratched his head. “I must have gotten distracted after I checked the kitchen faucet.”

I bit back all the nasty things I wanted to say, because we were at his mercy.

After he left we went through the house checking every nook and cranny, as we should have done before the builder closing. The joke the site manager and his boss made at the closing still rung in my ears. “See you didn’t need a home inspector.”

Like hell, we didn’t.

We didn’t discover the next surprise until the following morning. As I stepped from the shower I started to shiver. That’s odd, I thought, since I’d just turned the thermostat up to 68 degrees. After getting dressed I realized what the problem was. There was no heat vent in the bathroom. We searched the rest of the house—all the heat vents were where they should be, except we had an unexpected one in the master bedroom closet. Could the plumber have mistaken the closet for the hall bathroom? Not too far fetched considering he didn’t know hot from cold.

When I called the site manager with this bit of news, he said, ”Huh, well, it’s an interior bathroom. You really don’t need a heat vent. In fact, I don’t have one in my house.”

“Guess what,” I said, totally losing my temper, “I have three interior bathrooms in my Illinois home and they all have heat vents.”

“We can put one in, but you really don’t need it.”

“Humor me.”

On Monday, not only did the plumber show up, but the owner of the plumbing company as well. He apologized profusely and then said, “I want you to know that the man who did this is no longer with my company. And everything will be fixed this morning.”

And it was. I can’t say I was sorry to hear about the firing of the inept plumber.

As to the heat vent, I admit to having to use my teacher voice with the site manager when he showed up later that day still clinging to the belief that since he didn’t have a heat vent in his interior bathroom, we didn’t need one. But he relented. We now have a heat vent in our hall bathroom. And that nifty one in the master bedroom closet.

Yes, our dream came with challenges, but as dreams go it’s still a pretty good one.

Has there been a dream realized that turned out not to be the dream you imagined?