Fuhgedaboutit

I'm beginning to think that the world wide web is full of spiders. Google walk-in tub lawsuits and the slimeworld of predatory retailers targeting old folks opens up on your laptop. We were so dismayed that we started rethinking the whole walk-in tub idea.

The best ones are comparable to buying a new car, and there is no bucks for bathtubs program coming down from the Feds. The cheap ones don't hold water, LITERALLY, plus there is the issue of having to sit in dirty cold water while the thing drains. It can take 5 minutes, more than enough time for hypothermia to set in.

We spent most of the other night on the computer and working the phones just trying to get some sort of idea what would be the best deal for us. Some sites don't even have phone numbers, you have to send an email. Of those we called, most were manned by an answering service. The one salesperson Pat actually spoke with worked hard to get our Visa number right then and there, all the while dissing the other outlets. Afterwards, Pat told me the kid was on a cell phone driving on the Jersey Turnpike.

The next day, Pat called the local plumbing supply place, we went down and picked one out, along with the fixtures, which of course, are also expensive...extra large faucets to get the tub filled during your lifetime and something called a "minute" drain which will empty 60 gallons a minute; a miniature maelstrom in the house. If we bathed our daughter's minpin, Homer may end up swirling down the sewer.

The lesson here- you wouldn't buy a Buick without taking it for a test drive. Don't buy a bathtub you can't fondle in a showroom.

Me and Wilt the Stilt

The first time I ever heard of a truly custom built home was when some magazine visited Wilt Chamberlin's new house. He had extra tall cabinets in the kitchen because he was an extra tall guy. I don't know if he did all his own cooking or his wife and/or cook was extra tall too.

We are also building a custom house but we don't have to worry about extra tall cabinets because we are both regular sizes, although Pat's suits started fitting better once he started buying 40 short. BUT, this usonian is going to grow old with me, and hopefully, the best is yet to be...

We are making it suitable for aging geezers on wheels. The original house's corridors were all the width of a Pullman Car's. Of course, this is no longer possible due to those pesky building codes but also, we want to make them wheelchair accessible. This adaptation is one of the major reasons our house will be larger than the other.

Another big difference is in the bathtub. The orginal's tub is a lovely low, difficult to enter shallow thing. It is very serene looking, but if one is arthritic or worse, serenity is easier to attain if it is easier to bathe. We are searching the internet for a walk in bathtub. When we started thinking about things a couple of years ago, there were very few available, but thanks to the masses of aging boomers, there are tons, all of them very expensive.

Our builder needs a decision because since we're using a poured concrete floor throughout the house, these fixture decisions cannot be written in sand, they must be set in stone, RIGHT NOW!