The Adventure Named Egypt!

Devoted followers of this blog, and there aren't very many, are probably wondering what has been going on over the past few weeks.  We headed south for that cruise on Lake Nasser back about Valentine's Day.  It was a six day trip but took me over a month to write about it!

In the meantime, we have begun a major repair project for the apartment.  About fifteen months ago when we arrived in early January of 2024 we found the kitchen ceiling, powder room ceiling and a few other areas in a state of disaster due to water damage from the apartment above us.  Details are in last years blog posts here and here. 

To summarize the situation as we found it fifteen months ago: Large portions of the heavy plaster crown molding had separated and fallen to the floor in our kitchen, powder room and hallway that leads to the bedrooms.  Peeling paint and plaster were falling regularly from the ceiling in those areas.

Our upstairs neighbor, I'll call him Richard - or Dick for short - was the source of the water.  He had inherited the apartment from his father, I'll call him Big Dick.  Big Dick had reluctantly dealt with water leakage about seven years ago.  We refinished the kitchen ceiling at that time and repainted our apartment.  

Here is what our situation looked like in January, 2024.

  

The worst of our recessed kitchen lights (only seven years old) since replacement following Big Dick's first water fiasco, looked like this:

 

With encouragement from friends, we sought legal help.  We contacted a lawyer in the neighborhood who assured us that he could bring a successful legal case.  He had a nice, if not elaborate, office.

 

Within a few weeks he had successfully served papers on Dick and a police inspection of the properties would be scheduled.  Our lawyer visited us twice at our apartment and we completed this phase for a grand total of about one hundred dollars in legal fees.

Alas, nothing seemed to happen over the next ten months, in spite of the tempting promise of another hundred dollars in legal fees for some results.

In the meantime, an informal committee of concerned building residents (three of us) and a building contractor, visited Dick's apartment and pecked away with a hammer at some obvious loose tiles and potential sources for the water.

We carefully reviewed both of Dick's bathrooms and concluded that the floors likely needed to be torn up, proper water barriers installed and new floors laid. There was no membrane under the tile floor.

Since nothing had taken place on the legal front by the time we arrived this January, despite our lawyer telling us that we had a court date in November, we took the advice of another friend and sought legal help from another lawyer on the other side of the river in downtown Cairo.

He had a much larger office.  With a lobby! We were beginning to think that this lawyer would be a little more costly than the previous one.

 

Lawyer number two wanted three thousand dollars up front but said we had a very good case.

Well, this is Egypt.  For three thousand dollars I should be able to repair four or five kitchens AND bathrooms.

A couple of days later, it began to rain in our kitchen.  Linda put out all the pots and pans we own as water was pouring out of the recessed ceiling lights!  Towels were put down to catch other drips - we collected over a gallon of water in the pots in the next hour.

 

We dashed up to the next floor to confront Dick - he was just leaving his apartment, to go to his gym, no less.  We asked him to come into our kitchen to see the damage. He was very sorry. "Sorry" doesn't solve or fix the problem.

 It turns out that the problem was not with the floor of Dick's bathrooms; water was pouring through the floor of the disaster area called "his kitchen".

 

At some point, Big Dick had installed a tank for potable water in the kitchen.  The faucet from it was leaking - as was the faucet for the "city water" in the kitchen.  The water from the first leaky faucet was caught in a jar, the size of a Vlasic pickle jar.  The granite countertop surrounding the sink was broken in half so all leaking water ran down through the cabinet holding the sink - which, by now, had a totally rotted out floor.  A large 5 gallon bucket (think Home Depot bucket size), filled to overflowing, was presumably there to catch the leaking water.  Tip or spill any of the containers - or just neglect the containers - and the water fell to Dick's floor, ran to cracks, leaked along iron re-bar and onto the iron hooks holding our suspended ceiling before seeking an exit at our light fixtures.  Like the river Nile, the water wore its own channels through everything in its path until reaching our kitchen floor. We also had rivulets running down our wall tile from our ceiling to the floor.

With the help of friends, we negotiated a solution.  Dick would hire a plumber/fixer to redo his kitchen plumbing and cabinetry.  We would contribute some cash to make it happen immediately.  In the end, a very good repair job was done; new granite, a "catch basin" surrounding the sink, new plumbing.  There was even a re-grout and seal of the master bath floor just in case any water was coming from there.  It took about three days.  After carefully watching the repairman, I am confident that any water dispensed in Dick's kitchen will now go into the sewer drain instead of our apartment.

Dick was on his own to buy the new granite countertop.  We paid half of all the rest - our share came to $68.

Now, we just had to wait for things to dry out and consider how we would repair our damage.  We considered the possibility of returning to Cairo for a couple of weeks in the fall to supervise a remodeling job.  When our friend heard this idea he replied, "Why spend your money for a ticket? We can do it now." He called a so-called engineer (anyone with the least bit of technical skills is called an engineer) who came to our house to assess the situation. Yes, he could repair it in just five days. Our friend negotiated a price that for us was satisfactory. We knew, of course, that it would take longer than five days but we still had enough time so we gave the OK for the project to begin. We realistically figured that the five days quoted was more like about ten days in real time; but we still had fifteen days before we left. Project start date = March 20, 2025. By the 20th it was changed to the 22nd. Before starting we're two days behind. OK, let's begin.

The project.

• Tear out and replace current dropped ceiling in the kitchen
• Add a new dropped ceiling in the powder room (with lights)
• Repair all loose plaster in hall ceiling and walls
• Repair other plaster with water damage
• Repair numerous cracks that have appeared over the years (not water damage related)
• Install new crown molding in affected areas
  
• Repaint all walls and ceilings throughout

That's a big job; cost will run six to eight hundred dollars.

Finally the day came and the workers showed up and began demolition and paint preparation, (45 minutes late). We're off to a good start??   We moved everything we would need for living into our bedroom -the microwave, coffee maker and electric tea pot.  We covered all the furniture with plastic and crammed it into the living room. We referred to it as camping inside our apartment.

  

 

Day 1 "First, prepare the surface," that innocent sounding first instruction on every can of paint got underway.

  

 

I should point out that we don't actually have plaster walls.  Interior construction here consists of a layer of special "white cement" over the bricks that form walls. The painters used a special "putty" form of cement to fill cracks and holes.

 

 

Day 2  Demolition of the suspended dropped ceiling soon revealed a big surprise.  Our kitchen ceiling was disintegrating as the many years of leaking water had rusted through the re-bar and the bottom two inches of concrete was separating from the re-bar!  Dick has a problem - he and his mother (Dick is single at age 30 and lives with his mother) may soon fall through their floor and into our kitchen. What a surprise that would be for them (but not for us).

  

It is amazing to see the damage that leaking water can do to structural iron bars.

 

Dilemma: should we just patch it up and hide it with some epoxy or do a proper repair?  This is likely a big-money fix. Fortunately for us our downstairs neighbor is very well versed in construction so we called on him to take a look at our project. With alarm in his voice he immediately determined that our original plan was not sufficient to proceed. He knows a REAL engineer who can come and assess the situation but not until after Ramadan. This effectively puts our remodel on hold until after the imminent arrival of the big Eid el Fitr Holiday.

Day 3  Nobody showed up and nobody called to tell us the reason. Are you sure this is a five day project?

Day 4  Sheet rock installation in the powder room.

Day 5 An electrician came to install two recessed lights in the powder room. That's more light than previous and no shadows now.  He also installed two temporary lights in the kitchen so we can see enough for some light food preparation.   

  

 

We do not regret starting the project before leaving because now we have a good idea of what will happen in our absence. We will have to trust our friends to supervise the final repairs and finishing work.  We'll keep in contact via messenger, voice and photos, along the way. We have faith that it will all turn out well but wonder, "what will this cost - and will Dick end up paying for the damage?"  

Watch this space for the final  chapter to the story, next January!