Just a quick note on the post dated checks....I seem to recall something about post dating personal checks being not acceptable. I don't think a bank is required to honor a post dated personal check but it's something I would check with your bank about. I know businesses do it with pay checks and such but when I worked as a teller I seem to recall that it didn't apply to personal accounts. So in that case, you could be sending your rent like a month ahead of time and your landlord could cash them whenever they wanted. If that's true, you would be better off sending a money order which proves the date of purchase and seeing if there is some sort of option at the post office to simply get a receipt that you MAILED the check on a certain day. If there wasn't anything to sign for but you had a way to prove that you mailed it....seems like that would be about the only option at this point if they aren't willing to work out a direct deposit sort of thing.

OK, I'm back with more exciting pictures! First, so it doesn't get lost below -- marcolo -- I read installation instructions for a different one of these shower kits to get an idea of how they are installed, and they said do NOT use 100% silicone caulk. I don't know why. Also, it said NOT to caulk the interior where the frame base meets the pan, only the exterior seam. Why is that? Before I ripped this out, it was caulked (and coming loose) on both sides. Anyway, I decided to partially disassemble the shower frame to get a better idea of what is going on and how to fix it. Here's where I am now: First, as you can see, the wall panel was not plumb when it was adhered to the wall. That would be, of course, because they didn't level the pan when they put it in, so when they lined the wall panel up with the pan, it ended up crooked. Duh. Pretty sure whoever installed this never heard of a level. A closeup view shows it even better. The jamb (metal frame part that was screwed to the wall) only barely overlapped the wall panel by the time it reached the bottom. The screws at the top of the frame went through the wall panel, while the screws at the bottom did not. The pan is badly out of level in all directions (the other wall is even more out of plumb, sigh). Now we can see the state of the drywall underneath the panel... ...and it is really not good. Crumbling drywall and scary black stuff (mold?) extends several inches up behind the wall panel. Here's a little drawing I did showing how the studs/drywall/shower wall come together -- or don't, as the case may be. The studs are badly out of plumb too. Easy to see how the slightest gap in the caulk inside the shower meant water getting under the edge of the shower wall panel and wicking up into the green board. Sooo....now I'm not sure where to go next with this. One thought is to cut away (from behind) the edge of the drywall that is sitting down inside the pan, and then insert some kind of extra flashing behind the wall panel so that any water that got behind it would not get any further. Another would be to cut away all of the damaged drywall (several inches) and patch it, adding flashing as in the first option -- again, this would be from behind. No, I don't exactly know how I would do that, but maybe there's a way to McGyver it. ;) I could try to remove the wall panel (it seems to come away from the green board pretty easily), replace the studs (they are not plumb either) and all the green board, and re-adhere the wall panel. The studs are only there to support the shower wall. This could help solve the fact that the wall flexes where it doesn't meet the studs. The risk of course is that I could break the wall panel, and then I'd really be in trouble. Also, I'm not sure how easy it would be to get just the one panel out without having to take the corner and the other panel as well. Removing only the one panel wouldn't address the other wall of the shower which doesn't seem to have leak problems (probably due to the slope of the pan and the fact that the shower head is on that wall) but I would not be surprised to find water damage to that side as well. And of course there's always the chance this is just a complete waste of time and I will have to bite the bullet and replace this shower kit with another. I don't think there's any way to get the pan leveled, and the fact that it's not level really throws the rest of the installation off. I'm not clear on whether removing and leveling the pan would mean having to do something with the drain height, which might be outside of my DIY abilities (though I do have a great plumber I could call). I'm just not too confident this shower can be made watertight enough to not leak into the room beneath. I haven't even shown the issues we have with the seal thingy at the bottom of the door, where water can easily leak out onto the bathroom floor, and I know that if a good bit of water ends up on the floor, that alone can mean a leak downstairs -- water that goes under the baseboard pretty much goes right on through the subfloor. Any advice at all would be very much appreciated. As is my usual habit, I decided to dig into this problem while my husband is out of town, and I'm going to be nobody's favorite person in my house if I don't restore this bathroom to working order pretty soon! (The other shower is in the basement, and none of us really likes using it -- plus it's the same shower kit and I'm betting it isn't installed any more accurately than this one was!)

The difficulty about a bathtub is the entry/exit. I have real problems with my knees, for example. Getting into a bathtub is hard enough, but getting out of it is a nightmare! Without a vertical grab bar - rarely found for a tub, and even more rarely in the right location, on the side where your grip is strongest (e.g., are you left-handed or right-handed?), it takes some careful maneuvering for me to get out safely. For my MIL's tub (she's 84 but in reasonably good shape for her age with only minor balance issues), I have a short bar angled slightly upwards on the long side of the tub, just where it is comfortable when you sit up straight inside the tub. Then there is a longer vertical bar she can hold onto once she is standing up, close to the towel bar (which swings for easy access; it's actually a swinging curtain bar). She says this works very well for her and she feels safe.

Thanks, Alice; much appreciated. You probably saw in my post on possibly drilling a new well that we've decided to stick with the existing well for a year or two, assuming it recovers somewhat after the nearby reservoir is filled again. So, we will definitely address the hardness issue in the next month or so. I do check the pH of both the pool and spa regularly using litmus paper, as well as the raw water when I periodically re-fill the spa. The lowest I ever saw of the raw water was 8.4, and is usually in the nines. I suspect that either the lowered water table at the moment has an effect on pH, or that the sample was stale by the time they analyzed it, even though I packed it in a cooler. The lab is about 60 miles away (like everything else.....). And, sure enough, the well water is about 10 degrees warmer than normal at the moment! That really suprised me. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks as the table comes up. We do have a cheap dual sediment filter in place, which at least keeps the big chunks out of the house. I generally replace them about every 2 months, and they are usually rusty in color, I'm sure from the rusting well casing. But recently they are always brown and full of fine silt, consistent with our clay-based soil. We'll likely add another set or two before putting in the softener. As far as hydrology reports, I haven't found any real local. According to a professor who has studied the area, we have some of the most intricate and complex aquifer systems in the world, but where I am, near the major creek that drains the whole region, there is almost universal flow through our property, meaning we'll hit water no matter where we drill. So, now it's time to design a softener system that will work. Not too many local resources around here (that 60 miles to anywhere thing), so I'm not sure where to start. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks again.