Where No Man Has “Gone” Before

Technically this entry isn’t accurately titled. Quite a few men and women have gone here before, for this is a story about the downstairs “powder room” make-over.

We’ve lived in the condo for a while now, and though I made a push to repaint the downstairs three years ago, I ran out of steam after doing the living room and dining room (The Professor did the den and kitchen). That left the hallway and downstairs lavatory to be dealt with. I finally got my act together last month and did all of the hallway but the ceiling, leaving the bathroom for last.

The Prof had long wanted to do a space theme in the bathroom. Neither of us, however, thought that painting the bathroom walls black was a particularly wise move. The Prof selected a nice purple that would work with what he had in mind. He installed a new chrome TP holder, got a black seat for the throne, and painted the tank top black after doing some massive repair work to it. We tossed the old fleur de lis toilet paper holder, but decided to stay with the matching fleur de lis towel rack temporarily until the room was painted.

This I finally accomplished during the last two weeks. The towel rack came down so I could paint, and it was time to replace it with a nice, non-baroque towel rack.

Part 1: The Plan

This is what we finally found to replace the old towel rack with. Sleek and silver, with nice straight lines that make for easy cleaning made this the perfect replacement. I’d never installed a towel rack before, but how hard could it be?

Part 2: Reality

See this, dear readers? This is called a “drain”. You’ll find one in the bottom of most standard sinks. Reducing the drain to its basics, it’s a hole that water runs down so the sink doesn’t overflow. In this picture, the drain is closed so nothing can go down it. That is called “Locking the Barn after the Horse Escapes.”

Those in the know are already aware of this, but it turns out that things other than water can go down a drain. For example,

Part 3: Teeny, Weenie Allan Wrench Screws

See those itty bitty screws? They display larger than life in this picture, unless you have a really tiny monitor for your computer. THOSE are the reason that a) you do not use the sink counter as a work place and b) if you do use the sink counter as a work space, you CLOSE THE FREAKING DRAIN.

Part 4: Corrective Actions

This, my children, is what is known in veterinary circles as a “cow magnet”. Cow magnets are big pill-shaped magnets that you feed to cows. Cows slurp up a lot of grass in one mouthful, and sometimes other stuff that has fallen on the ground gets slurped up as well. If that stuff happens to be nails or wire or other metal things with sharp or pointy edges, then the cow can get something called “hardware disease”.

Honest. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Part 5: The Plan

By happy happenstance, it turned out that the teeny weenie Allan wrench screw was paramagnetic. And by remarkable coincidence, I am the proud owner of several cow magnets, some of which haven’t even ever been used. I decided that I was going to try to fish the screw out of the drain with the cow magnet. I grabbed the magnet, a roll of sticky tape and some twine, and was in the process of trying to figure out how to tie a string to the magnet so it wouldn’t slip off when The Prof suggested I use a pair of stockings. That man proves his brilliance time and again, although it would have been better had he suggested it five minutes earlier, before I started getting frustrated with my tie-the-string-to-the-magnet attempts.

Here is the magnet in the stocking, post-fishing expedition. You can’t really see it in the picture, but the teeny weenie little Allan screw is stuck to the magnet/stocking complex. Sometimes a Salamander gets luckier than she deserves. And sometimes it’s the cow magnet that goes where no man has gone before.

Part 6: The Result

And here is the powder room with its newly installed towel rack: the two hour job that should have taken about twelve minutes. It’s a good thing I don’t make a living doing this.

Part 7: The Next Phase

Now all that remains is to hang the space pictures I got off NASA’s Chandra website a few years back. Once I’ve finished that, going to the bathroom at my house could be considered an other-worldly experience.