I Certainly Am Not A Plumber
Greetings weblog community & various Google keyword searchers. News has been a little slow lately so I thought i’d fill in the space with an update on my adventures in home repair.
Pretty much everything is painted and starting to look good. The stained cabinet job hasn’t been touched in a month and probably won’t until I move in. I replaced all the wall switches and outlet panels in my house from the standard issue plastic to shiny chrome, and it looks damn good. It’s amazing what a $3 wall switch plate can do for the look of a room.
The only MAJOR problem i’ve encountered was my sink leaking, and boy was that a problem. First off, like the title of this very article states: I am certainly no plumber. I had to learn it the hard way, of course.
I share the water meter with my mom’s house, and unfortunately other than at the meter there is no way to turn the water off to EITHER house. Normally that’s not much of a problem, but it is when the water line hasn’t been shut off in about 30 years. After using the wrong tools to try to turn the thing around, including a hammer, my friend Ronnie and I decided to just try to get the faucet on without turning the water off.
I think that was our first mistake. The second mistake was disconnecting the water lines BEFORE we tried to unscrew the faucet. After we had emptied our third 5 gallon paint bucket full of water in the span of two minutes, I figured we had a big problem. I felt like we were on some reality show, with me trying to keep the water in the buckets while Ronnie was trying to pull a five gallon bucket full of water out from under the sink every 45 seconds. I eventually just bent the cheap plastic lines in half and it sealed off the water temporarily. I’m lucky the lines didn’t snap.
The only thing we could do was hook the water lines back up to the faucet and hope it didn’t leak. One fit just fine, the other had a slow drip. Well, more like a moderate drip. Okay the thing was leaking.
So, being the irresponsible male in my mid-twenties that I am, I left a bucket and some sheets by the leak and went with my friends to Austin for a night of drunken debauchery on 6th Street.
I had a blast in Austin, even with the nagging thought of my slowly flooding house in the back of my mind. When I woke up the next morning I called my mom and she told me I had an inch and half of water in my kitchen. Enough of the amateur crap, I thought, it’s time to get a professional.
Damn near $200 later, my faucet is installed. All this happened while I was about 150 miles away with nothing to do but worry and call my mom every five minutes for updates. I felt like a total dumbass afterwards but I certainly learned my lesson: leave the professional work to the PROFESSIONALS.
I can paint, change wall switches, replace doorknobs, and can even do a minimal carpentry work.
I certainly am not a plumber.
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