An Explosion in the Bathroom!

Well, I know the title of this post sounds like this could be a very gruesome little story, and honestly, it kind of is! But this is a story that cannot go untold. Many of you know that Todd and I have been remodeling our main bathroom located on the second level of our house. It's been a long road, and we're almost done! In fact, in a matter of a few days, we will have a fully working bathroom that will just need some little bits and pieces of finish work done. Obviously with a bathroom remodel there is a bit of a "mess" that accompanies the process. So after tiling and painting and sawing there is usually a need to dispose of the mess, right? Most of the junk is usually swept up and dumped into the garbage can, but unfortunately, a lot of it seems to find its way into the bathtub and down the drain. We both recently noticed that our shower has not been draining like it should and you end up standing in several inches of water by the time you finish. Fortunately, Todd remembered that we could empty the "trap" and that would most likely help with the problem we were having. So last night, we went into our bathroom in the basement, which is located under the bathroom we have been remodeling. We'd cut a hole in the ceiling of that bathroom so we could install the bathtub upstairs, and luckily the trap was right there and all we needed to do was unscrew it and hold a bucket underneath it at the same time to catch any "gunk" that might fall out. Todd climbed up on a step-stool to unscrew and I was standing on the toilet with bucket in positiion. Todd began to unscrew, one turn, two turns, three turns and then the EXPLOSION happened. After the third turn of the trap, masses of black watery gunk poured out completely covering the two of us, the walls, the toilet, the towels, the shower curtain, the rugs, and obviously the floor and anything else that happened to be in that bathroom. We both stood there, somewhat shocked and covered in gunk. What just happened? No way did that just happen! Needless to say the explosion was a complete disaster, but we couldn't help but laugh at the same time. Of course this just happened! Why wouldn't it? No other part of the bathroom remodel has been easy, so why would this be? We were both dripping and couldn't risk tracking the gunk through the rest of the house, so we had to strip down and carefully carry our rugs, towels, clothes, shoes and my favorite slippers into the utility room and start washing everything. Then on to the walls and floor and shower and toilet—I scrubbed until everything was again clean. During the whole process I thought I'd recoginized the smell of hair-dye in the watery black gunk and was worried everything would be stained. Luckily it wasn't and our clothes and rugs and everything came clean. The only thing that I couldn't restore was our floorboards, which are now a nice grayish color. I guess we'll be adding "paint downstair's bathroom floorboards" to our ever-expanding list of things to do!

P.S. The shower now drains!