As I sit in our ensuite, I gaze around with pride remembering how I built this. I built the room structure before plumbing in a toilet, sink and shower. I tiled the walls and laid the flooring. The only thing I didn’t do was plaster the walls, not really my forte and sometimes we have to recognise our own limitations. A few weeks ago though, I wasn’t admiring a job well done; the shower leaked. Nothing drastic, but nonetheless there would be a small pool of water outside of the shower after use. The problem being that the floor wasn’t level, therefore the shower tray wasn’t level, and this left a gap under the shower door. I’d tried to adjust the frame but had taken it to its limit which meant the door was wobbly. I didn’t think much of the mastic job around the shower either, uneven and already starting to lift slightly in places.

The problem is obvious, the floor is not level, I didn’t build the house so that’s someone else’s fault. There’s not enough compensation in the frame to rectify the first problem, poor shower design if you ask me. I can’t think of an excuse for the mastic debacle.

Now I can sit in the ensuite every morning for as long as I like lamenting others’ poor workmanship and poor design, and I did for a while, but it won’t solve the problem.

I decided to try to fix the issue, after all, in the current climate we do have to try to keep ourselves amused.  Thinking about this, I really ought to have made a better job of levelling the shower tray in the first place. Too late now though, it’s bonded in place.  I decided to move the shower frame away from the wall slightly, this adjustment was enough to stabilise the door, why I didn’t do this in the first place I can’t say, probably too focused on finishing the job, maybe a bit of laziness crept in. The adjustment also meant that the gap below the door was minimised and this solved the leak.  I took all the mastic off around the shower tray and started again. A far better finish was achieved.

In deciding to do something about the problem, I stopped seeing it as a problem, stopped blaming others and stopped thinking about my misfortune.  I took responsibility for my own poor workmanship, realising that I had failed to take into account the fact the floor wasn’t level. 

Sometimes we spend too much time complaining about problems, finding fault in others, that we fail to see where we might have done better. When we fall short, we blame others or blame circumstances, rarely do we consider that we could have done the job better or handled the situation differently.  If we start to take responsibility for our own shortcomings, then the world becomes a better place.  Putting the ‘I’ back into ‘responsibility’ really is quite empowering.  ‘When fate hands us a lemon, let’s try to make a lemonade’ (Carnegie, 1998:185).   

Reference

Carnegie, D (1998) How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, London: Vermilion