I Broke Your Caulk

We’re getting underground sprinklers. It was not a decision made lightly or easily, but there it is. Today was step one in that process: installing the back-flow preventer and the piping to get water from the well out to the forthcoming system. The plumber was quite young and had little tact. He couldn’t keep his face mask in place to save his life, and he was more concerned about moving with alacrity—his boss had just called!—than he was with ensuring his job was well and truly done. As he was leaving I asked if I needed to do anything further, like, say, caulk the new opening into our house, which I noticed he had not yet done when I had last looked. “Nope,” he said, “you’re all good.”

But I wasn’t all good. When I went down to inspect his work I could see daylight around the new pipe going outside from where I stood in the basement. At my feet, the insulation laid in tatters. No, I was not good at all. Fortunately for me our builder is still in the neighborhood. So I walked down to him and asked for his thoughts. He laughed and handed me a tube of caulk. And so I attended to finishing what the plumber had started. Unfortunately for me and my wife, I’m really not handy at all. On the first sqeeze of the caulk gun, the plate pushed through the tube, exploding it. So I was forced by circumstance to replace the anticipated finesse with a haphazzard hand application. It’s fine, I’m sure, but I still felt the ass walking back down the street with a blown out tube of caulk to a man who makes building a house look as easy as pouring a glass of water.