The one with the shower shenanigans
This week I tell the story of a DIY job that sat on my to-do list for about a year before finally forcing itself to the top. What should have been a quick trip to B&Q and a simple repair somehow turned into multiple journeys, far more effort than expected, and a level of frustration that only DIY seems capable of producing.
The worst part is that the shower wasn't actually the problem.
I was.
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Transcript
Hey, it's diggy.
Speaker A:Do you have DIY jobs in the house that plague you?
Speaker A:Something that's probably dead easy to solve, but you just never do it because I do.
Speaker A:My big one is.
Speaker A:Well, that is was the shower.
Speaker A:There's nothing wrong with the shower except, you know, so you've got your pole that holds the shower up onto the wall and you've got the.
Speaker A:The like C cup thing that you stick the shower into.
Speaker A:It's probably got a name.
Speaker A:I don't what it's called.
Speaker A:Well, the adjustment screw on that broke on hours, probably about a year ago now.
Speaker A:So long ago.
Speaker A:So it meant that you couldn't raise or lower the shower without.
Speaker A:Because it would fall.
Speaker A:Basically.
Speaker A:I managed to wedge it in such a way that it was the perfect height for all of us, so it wasn't really an issue.
Speaker A:So it was one of those things that every time we did need to take the shower off the hook or, you know, you needed to adjust it in some way, you go, oh, God, yeah, I forgot about that.
Speaker A:I'll sort that this weekend.
Speaker A:And then never sort it.
Speaker A:It's lifting my to do list, keeping him pushed back and pushed back for, like I say, probably about a year now.
Speaker A:Anyway, the other week it finally completely gave way.
Speaker A:I can't remember which one it was, but one of the kids was in the shower and it just fell off.
Speaker A:We heard it from downstairs.
Speaker A:It went by and we thought the kid had fallen over.
Speaker A:But no, it turns out it was the shower falling off.
Speaker A:I looked at it, I thought, right, okay, well, I need to fix it now.
Speaker A:We can't have a shower if I don't.
Speaker A:Let's.
Speaker A:Let's get it sorted.
Speaker A:So, you know, like you do.
Speaker A:Didn't think about anything beforehand.
Speaker A:Just left the house and went to B and Q.
Speaker A:We all went.
Speaker A:We're like, yay, let's make a trip of it.
Speaker A:So it gets to B and Q. I thought all it needs is the hook part, right?
Speaker A:The part that you hook the shower into with the.
Speaker A:With the knob on the other side that you tighten it up with to make it stay in place.
Speaker A:That's all we needed.
Speaker A:So I thought, I'll just go to B and Q.
Speaker A:They probably sell them, right?
Speaker A:I got to B and Q. I couldn't find them anywhere.
Speaker A:I went and asked somebody and they said, yeah, we don't sell that part.
Speaker A:You have to buy the entire rail.
Speaker A:I was like, ah, okay, fine.
Speaker A:Anyway, so we went to the shower section and we're having a look at the rails actually Wasn't as bad as I thought.
Speaker A:They were like 20 quid, right?
Speaker A:For all we need is just a rail to hold the shower up.
Speaker A:So we're looking at it, we're like, oh, that's actually the same brand as ours.
Speaker A:We can tell.
Speaker A:Well, because it says it on it and it looks almost identical to ours.
Speaker A:So I thought, you know what, I could probably just get that, take the hook off it and just put it on ours.
Speaker A:Like, it's probably just as easy to do that.
Speaker A:So we bought it.
Speaker A:It was 20 quid.
Speaker A:Nothing, not.
Speaker A:Not even worth worrying about.
Speaker A:I might as well have just done it ages ago at that point in my head, for some reason, I thought it was going to cost hundreds to fix the shower.
Speaker A:So I took it home, I arrived home, I procrastinated, making coffee and, you know, having a snack and think, I don't want to do this.
Speaker A:And then I finally went upstairs and did it.
Speaker A:I don't like doing diy.
Speaker A:I hate it.
Speaker A:It's just not my thing at all.
Speaker A:I find it boring, I find it tedious.
Speaker A:I just.
Speaker A:I don't enjoy it.
Speaker A:So anyway, I had to stand on the bath, right?
Speaker A:I'm not a light person.
Speaker A:It's hard to hold yourself up for that long.
Speaker A:So I've stood on the bath doing the splits.
Speaker A:I took the.
Speaker A:I went to put this thing on the shower.
Speaker A:I realized that in order to put it on the shower, I would have to take the entire rail off the wall just because of the way it's built.
Speaker A:So I thought, well, you know what, might as well just use the whole new rail, because why not?
Speaker A:So as I'm taking it off, I then realized that whoever had fit this previously had absolutely made a right pig's ear of the.
Speaker A:The holes that you put the screws into to hold it in place.
Speaker A:So it was a bit of a faff, essentially, to get it to stay.
Speaker A:What would happen is it was loose at this point.
Speaker A:It wasn't actually held in place.
Speaker A:And I hadn't realized.
Speaker A:So the whole thing had only been dangling on by the skin of its teeth for ages.
Speaker A:What a weird saying that is.
Speaker A:The skin of its teeth.
Speaker A:Never really understood that one.
Speaker A:Anyway, so I took the rail off the wall, realized that I need to like fully install the new rail at this point.
Speaker A:So I went to doing that, realized then that the holes are in a different place, you know, like a different configuration.
Speaker A:The new one only had two, the previous one had three.
Speaker A:Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker A:Anyway, it took Me, about an hour and a half.
Speaker A:I eventually managed to get it on the wall.
Speaker A:It's on the wall.
Speaker A:It's brilliant.
Speaker A:Everything's amazing.
Speaker A:I picked the shower up out of the bath, went to put it on the hook and it doesn't fit.
Speaker A:It's too big.
Speaker A:I'm like, ah, I can't believe that.
Speaker A:I never even considered that they would be different sizes.
Speaker A:You would think that it's just a standard sized bloody shower grip, wouldn't you?
Speaker A:I was like, okay, fine, I'll have to go and think about this then.
Speaker A:So I disappears.
Speaker A:I went downstairs and made another coffee, had another snack.
Speaker A:You know, by this point I'd worked up an appetite.
Speaker A:And then I got onto the B and Q website.
Speaker A:I'm having a look and I couldn't really find any information on these shower hooks on like there's different sizes of them.
Speaker A:It just, there was nothing there.
Speaker A:So I thought, you know what I'll do?
Speaker A:I'll just measure the one I've got and then I'll go and measure one at B and Q.
Speaker A:Go and measure a pipe at B and Q.
Speaker A:Because it was essentially, it was the shower pipe that was the issue.
Speaker A:The pipe feeds into the bottom of the shower head and the pipe is the bit that goes in the hook on this particular shower.
Speaker A:So I thought, I'll do that.
Speaker A:So I started having a look at, you know, just to try and get an idea of cost and what it would be.
Speaker A:You know, see, is it actually worth going now or do I want to wait until I get paid?
Speaker A:Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker A:And I realized that actually there was, on the BQ website, there was a specific hose and shower head that goes with the pole that I've just bought.
Speaker A:So I thought, you know what, it might just be easy to just buy that new shower head and a new shower hose and it's the right one then.
Speaker A:So I, I trot back to B and Q. I went and got the shower head and hose.
Speaker A:I took it, interestingly, it was really good.
Speaker A:I took it to the counter and the guy behind the counter actually said, oh, this'll fit the pole that you bought earlier.
Speaker A:I was like, oh, wow.
Speaker A:How do you know about a pole?
Speaker A:Earlier he said I was the one, was the one who served you at the couch.
Speaker A:I remember you coming in.
Speaker A:I was like, all right, okay, right, cool.
Speaker A:I was like, good memory.
Speaker A:You know, it was weird.
Speaker A:It sort of took me out a bit.
Speaker A:So confirmation that it's going to fit there.
Speaker A:I was like, brilliant.
Speaker A:At least I know I'm Doing the right thing here.
Speaker A:So I said, are the threads potentially different where it actually connects to the shower?
Speaker A:He said, no, no, no, it's always the same that.
Speaker A:Don't worry about that.
Speaker A:Like, all right, brilliant.
Speaker A:Gets home, takes off the old shower pipe, attaches it, Brilliant, everything's great.
Speaker A:Goes to hook the shower back into the shower hook, and it didn't fit.
Speaker A:I was like, what is going on here?
Speaker A:So I had to walk away.
Speaker A:I was.
Speaker A:I was fuming at this point.
Speaker A:I was like, he told me it fit, right?
Speaker A:So, like, it's gotta fit.
Speaker A:It makes no sense.
Speaker A:It's the right one for it.
Speaker A:I goes back on the website, you could order all three of these pieces as a pack.
Speaker A:Like, you know, like when you.
Speaker A:You select multi buy and you buy them all together, they should fit.
Speaker A:It made no sense as to why it doesn't fit.
Speaker A:So I goes upstairs with my tape measure.
Speaker A:I measured it again.
Speaker A:I'm like, that's a different size to what I measured before.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's bigger.
Speaker A:That makes no sense.
Speaker A:So storms off.
Speaker A:Spent far too long, like, really thinking about this, trying to work out what it is.
Speaker A:And then it hit me.
Speaker A:It just.
Speaker A:It just hit me like a ton of bricks that what I'd done.
Speaker A:So I walked back upstairs, I walked up to the shower, got to the hook, and I just turned it over because, of course, it's bloody tapered, isn't it?
Speaker A:It's thicker on one side than it is the other, otherwise it'll just fall all the way through.
Speaker A:The first one fit, there was no problem.
Speaker A:My old shower head fit inside it.
Speaker A:I just had the frigging thing upside down.
Speaker A:It still to this day makes my blood boil that I was so stupid when it came to fixing the shower.
Speaker A:Anyway, see you next time.
