We’ve been in our current house for a little over six years. We were in our previous house for seven. It’s at this point one finds all those little maintenance things start to creep up and bite you in the behind.
Sometimes, I feel that bite almost every day.
Oh, they’re not big things, but enough to drive you slowly mad, just like that Heath Ledger meme where he played the Joker in The Dark Knight. Everybody loses their minds.
Last weekend, the light went out in the laundry room. No big deal, right? Except that it’s fluorescent, and I don’t stock those at home usually. And is this a case of a bulb dying, or the fancy schmancy motion detector light switch failing, you know, the one that doesn’t work worth a damn with fluorescent bulbs. And how do I know?
It turns out handing a MagLite to my wife is not a way to inspire her to do the laundry (which I usually do, anyway). A few days later, the mountain of clothes growing, I moved a dual floodlight work lamp into the laundry room, where, once one of its bulbs burned out, I discovered the dead fluorescent bulb.
Most recently the culprit has been bath towel bars, the ones hanging outside the shower or tub.
Within the span of a few days, possibly hours, two have started to work their way out of the wall. “What’s this?” Spencer asked, holding up the bar, now lying on the floor.
“Don’t ask, and don’t touch,” I growled, not so much at him, but the house. Do you hear me, house? I’m onto you!
I will now get up from my keyboard, tape measure in hand, and investigate. Oh, what’s this? The basement bathroom towel bar is 24 inches long, centre-to-centre for the support posts. The main bathroom upstairs? It’s 19. Both fill their space quite well. And both are DOOMED TO FAIL.
Why? Perhaps it’s because wall studs are typically, regularly, perhaps by building code, spaced 16 inches apart. Remember studs? Those solid pieces of lumber that, if you use a proper screw, can sustain sizeable loads? The ones that hold up the roof? Yeah, the towel bar manufacturers know nothing of them.
A search on HomeDepot.ca shows plenty of 24-inch towel bars, some 18-inch, an occasional 20-inch. There are even 26-inch, and at least one 30-inch. But NOT ONE is 16-inchs, or a multiple thereof. If they can make a 30-inch, why not a 32? How is it Stanley Tools can figure out how to make framing squares in 16-inch sizes, but Moen, maker of all things bathroom, can’t make a 16-inch towel bar?
Instead, they give you these tiny screws and plastic anchors. Oh! Anchors! They should be able to defy gravity and hold up a wet, luxuriant Hudsons Bay bath sheet!
These aren’t the beefier metal, screw-in varieties. No, these are the simple plastic plug with the tiny little screw that goes in it. It looks almost as awful as the screw-in variety if left in the wall, but no longer in use, but not quite. It’s simply a lower level of hideous.
Which, by the way, both bathrooms are full of. Previous owners over the years have installed various pictures, racks, towel bars, toothbrush holders, who knows? All that’s left is the archeological trail of drywall anchors.
Can you see the planned obsolescence? The towel bar makers KNOW that at some point, maybe five or 10 years down the road, those anchors they so generously provide will finally pull out of the drywall. Instead of attempting to re-install it in the same location, you’re probably going to replace the now-somewhat-out of date towel bar. Oh, can’t replace just one, might as well do the whole bathroom! And if you happen to make faucets, hey, maybe those could use a refresh, too. The entire minor remodel hinges on the two-cent plastic anchors failing, as they surely will, in a few years time.
Insidious, these towel bar manufacturers are. Perhaps they are in cahoots with the drywallers and plaster manufacturers, too?
Maybe I will take my hacksaw to my 19-inch bar and cut it down to 16 inches! Try that on for size, towel bar makers! I will thwart you yet!
So say we all, all those who have to pick up our towels off the floor!
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached [email protected].
