Would you be shocked if I told you I had some plumbing problems recently? You would? HAVE YOU EVER READ THIS STUPID BLOG? If I'm not fixing plumbing, I'm killing plants or complaining about the roof leak.
My first bout of a plumbing flareup happened a couple of months ago. My toilet started leaking! PANIC!!! POOH EVERYWHERE!!! Oh wait...the leak was coming from the tank, not the bowl. Phew. Ok, not pooh everywhere, just some inconvenient water drips each time I flushed from the clean water in the tank. Thank goodness for backup bathroom a la the guest wing. The kind folks at the home warranty sanctioned plumbers came to town, brought me a brand new toilet for a slightly upgraded price, and tada! I have a throne that only my bum has christened.
Next plumbing issue: the mini sink in the kitchen. Why do I have two sinks in my kitchen? There's a regular sized one and a little mini one situated right beside the stove. I guess some people use it to fill up pots or do things while they are cooking that benefit from the proximity of a mini sink. Me? I don't cook. I don't need a mini sink. It has become the sink I use to fill the dogs' water bowls simply because it's 5 steps closer than the regular sink. So I now have a human sink and a dog water sink. Oh lala.
Mini sink started dripping a few weeks ago. I turned the knob harder, and it stopped. Then, the leak started again. I turned the knob even harder, and it slowed slightly but still dripped. Being the busy executive that I am (hahaha), I didn't have time to put in the home warranty repair request right away, so the leak got faster and faster until one day I woke up to a solid stream of water coming out of the faucet. Uh oh. What have I done? If I lived in California, I would have gone to prison for the rest of my life for going over my water allotment. It was time to get serious about getting a plumber, and I was also going to shut that whole sink off at the valve underneath....or so I thought. Like a fool. A stupid, stupid fool.
The shut-off valve under a sink is a pretty great idea if you ask me. You want to stop the flow of water past that point, you turn off the valve. Voila! There's one for hot water and one for cold water. When I went to turn off my valve, water started spraying everywhere....ssspprraaayyyyyy aaaaaaaaaaaaaa. How unusual. The shut off valve wasn't shutting off, it was opening up a torrential flow of water that poured into my kitchen. I opened the valve back up to stop the spray, and the water went back to running in a thin trickle out of the faucet. I was stuck with the leak that was eroding wetlands and draining rivers, streams, and lakes of precious resources.
The next day the plumbers arrived and discovered the part needed to fix the sink wasn't one of the standard parts that they had conveniently packed in the truck. Nope. It was an unusual part that can only be obtained from a mining operation run on the planet Mars. After a quick trip (an hour round-trip from my house) to both Ace and Home Depot, a repair kit was secured in lieu of having the fully new piece.
And the shut-off valve? The plumber said that I stopped turning too soon. "Why, what do you mean, sir? I stopped turning when water started pouring out of the valve." Evidently, shut-off valves are now designed to be like some sort of physical challenge where you have to reach what you think is the breaking point and then PUSH THROUGH to victory.
Have you hit mile 50 on your ultra-marathon and think you won't make it to the finish line at mile 75? Keep going past the pain and the panic. That's how you have to approach my shut-off valve. Now I know.
On the bright side, I have a guy coming to deal with the roof leak next week and to fix some drywall that fell victim to said roof leak and to patch the drywall hole I cut in the wall when I rescued the baby kittens a few years ago. So that's all positive and stuff, right? The best news is that monsoon season has arrived, so it's supposed to rain every single day between now and the day the roof folks come. I love home ownership.
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