When we moved into this house over six years ago, the walls in the toilet looked fairly good. I didn’t like that they were wallpapered and impossible to really clean, but the room was all right. However, a year or two ago someone accidentally broke through the wall down near the floor, and gradually the walls became mildewy and the ceiling looked awful. Then, a few weeks ago, someone figured out what the noise was that we had been hearing for a few days… a leaky water pipe inside the wall. Our resident builder, James, tore a hole in the wall, found the leak, and got it stopped, and formed a plan of action. A few days later, Gayle and I went to town and bought plywood and paint, and that weekend James finished gutting the lower half of the room. He replaced the old gib board (wallboard) with plywood and put a piece of trim around the room at the join with the old wall. Esther requested that he build a box in the wall to hold rolls of toilet paper up above floor level so they’ll be accessible, clean and dry, so he did that, too, and created new corner trim for just outside the door. He had to replace the door jamb, too, because that was rotten because of a water leak sometime in the past before we came here. Compare the before and after pictures, and you’ll know why I am so happy that the job was forced on us!
