And then there was hot water. Every time we flushed.

Probably the most, um, unexpected mistakes among all the things that went wrong once we got the gas turned on was that our toilet was running hot water every time we flushed.

But let me start at the beginning. We totally got gas meters last week! The gas authorization came through at the end of the last full week of July and as soon as we got the okay, I called National Grid. They set us up with an appointment for the following Tuesday.

We tell our contractor to make sure everything is ready for the meters to get put in and he assured me that would be the case.

National Grid rolls in on Tuesday morning (after a series of phone reminders that we need to be at the house or they will charge us for an uncompleted visit) and wouldn’t you know it – nothing is hooked up. Not the stove, or the washer dryer, or even the boiler or hot water heater. He also didn’t mark which meter was for which floor so the national grid lady couldn’t even hook up the meters.

We called our contractor and I lost my shit. What the hell did plumber do the last time he came by, grunted at us, spent some time in the boiler room, and left without warning??

Our contractor got a hold of the plumber, who said he could be at the house in 20-30 minutes and asked if national grid could wait.

The national grid woman was super nice about everything, but no, she couldn’t wait 20-30 minutes to have the plumber take even longer to hook everything up.

The plumber showed up 1.5 hours later and the first thing he said to my boyfriend was he couldn’t believe that national grid wouldn’t wait, what prima donnas.

What????????

He hooked everything up, again leaving with no word.

National grid comes back two days later (thank goodness they’re not like coned and take 2-3 weeks for an open appointment) and installs the meters.

We have a stove! Check out the flame under our first pot of tea!

And hot water!

Except when we turn the lever on in the shower, the hot water comes on first, even though its supposed to go cold to hot. Our tenants made us aware of this one because theirs was doing the same thing.

Oh, and no cold water comes out of our bathroom sink.

And no hot water comes out of the tenants bathroom sink.

And the warm setting on the washer turns out be to so scalding hot, we have to let the clothes sit for a while before we move them to the dryer.

Oh yeah. And our freaking toilet is flushing hot water!!

I demand the plumber come back the next day and tell my contractor to tell him to check everything.

The plumber comes and goes.

And the only thing he fixes are the showers!

We have hot toilet water all weekend. We are afraid to wash clothes. I brush my teeth in the kitchen sink because the water coming out of our bathroom sink is so hot, it doesn’t even register as hot when I put my finger under it.

The plumber comes back on Monday after a long list of problems I tell to our contractor. He said he thinks what happened is the people who originally worked on our house were later fired and it sounds like they screwed up big time.

The plumber this time is there for two hours and apparently is welding or something, because we have to disable the smoke detector in our room from all the smoke he is generating.

He leaves just as my boyfriend needs to leave the house.

We get a text from our contractor that everything should be fixed. We have yet to wash clothes again, but everything else is hot on the left, cold on the right, and our toilet is no longer also a seat warmer.

You really can’t make this stuff up.