Overdue Maintenance

I can't say this enough, I'm extremely grateful to Tunnel2Towers and the other orgs that pooled together to help build our forever home.

Unfortunately, the timeline I gave T2T incurred some cut corners with the contractors. As a result, some standard features of a smart home went missing. This is on me, and maybe a bit on the contractors. Not on T2T at all.

Here, you can see my attempt to repair the shower bench in my accessible bathroom. Unfortunately, not only is this out of my skillset, it is so beyond repair, I fear nothing of the original bench can be salvaged.

At least 2 of the support board are split in multiple places. The connecting sections are rotted through. I oiled it often, but we have hard water, and this thing was not mounted to the wall in a way that it could be moved, or removed for cleaning and maintenance. The ENTIRE thing was bolted together and screwed directly into the wall with Robertson screws, directly into the frame through the tile and grout.

As a result, the entire bench will need to be replaced. There may even be structural damage. The tile in the bathroom was an issue too. Missing grout in some areas between tiles. It's understandable that you have to replace grout on some surfaces periodically as you clean them, but the wall tiles were not spaced at all, and there are gaps where no grout ever existed.

Besides it being ugly, it's been a concern since I moved in...

Several handrails were installed, but most of them had to be removed due to sub-standard quality. They rusted after my first week using the shower, before I had ever used bleach or any other oxidizer. We never had an issue with the remaining safety bars. Say nothing of the fact 2 of them were installed into .... the air, the only thing holding them up was the tile itself. We had them removed and grouted over the holes.

Since the house was built, for the first 4-5 years of having the house, I couldn't use the bathtub at all. It took so long to fill with hot water, the tub water was effectively cold by the time it was full. We eventually got help from Jeff Elie of Courage and Sacrifice (thank you so much!) who helped remodel our kitchen floor when our fridge quietly leaked out and destroyed the flooring, flooding into the basement periodically when it went into a bizarre defrost cycle, melting all of the ice in the bin and draining directly onto the floor. Mr. Elie sent crews out and had them do repairs in the kitchen, got my bathtub plumbing sorted so I could actually use it, and his crew repainted several rooms. We also switched the side the hot/cold dial for the shower was on, so it was easy to adjust while using the shower.

I had no idea the shower bench was that bad, or I might have addressed it sooner, needless to say it, I haven't been using it for over a year because it felt unsafe.

Needless to say, I've just been cleared by the VA to get quotes from contractors for a remodel. The Special Adaptive Housing grant promises enough money, I believe, for the remodel, and maybe even some other much needed repairs for accessibility. We just finished the initial paperwork and photograph process. Here's a snapshot.