A $5000 mistake
Wellp, the latest bathroom situation is something that could have been a lot less expensive, if I’d been a bit more willing to get some proper diagnosing this time around. I still think it’s a good thing that this work is getting done, but gosh, things didn’t have to go this way.
The short version is, it turns out that the leak wasn’t behind the wall, it was just water damage from water trickling down along the edge of the tile.
Which is, to be fair, still the fault of how the tile was previously installed and finished.
But fixing it didn’t require ripping out all of the tile or redoing the plumbing. The previous plumbing repair had actually held just fine. A shorter-term fix of a taller splash guard is all that I really needed to do.
Pulling the tile out did find that there were some Issues with how things were installed but they didn’t actually require fixing. And honestly I really hated the way it looked and just how janky everything was. I still wanted to get rid of the tile eventually, even if it didn’t turn out to actually be necessary.
Switching to a fiberglass composite shell is definitely a downgrade but it’s one I’m fine with, and now at least the hardboard will be installed correctly and things will actually drain correctly, with (hopefully) no need for endless future hacks to prevent the drywall from rotting.
I’m annoyed that this is going to cost $5000 to deal with, and that I can’t actually blame the original contractor (entirely) for this. It’s still going to be an improvement overall, I think.
I wish this shit didn’t all have to be learned in retrospect though. Or that this weren’t so fucking expensive.
Oh well.