The lessons that home ownership teaches you.

Lesson number one when owning a house, you never stop learning that you don't have a clue. Take my latest plumbing home improvement minny mee project. We were able to procure a lightly used utility sink from one of SG's uncles. It is bigger, lacks the little tiny rusting iron hairs in the basin, has a faucet, and handles for better hot and cold water management. Like any of that really matters, this is a utility sink for God's sake not a bathroom sink or a kitchen sink. Plumbing in general and specifically in my house is one of those things that I loath more than all other improvement tasks. Why? Well because once you start my friend there ain't no turning back. It's not like once you take off that faucet and find that you need a part and that you don't have said part and cannot find said part that you can then put it all back together and then wait till tomorrow to find our call your handy dandy plumber friend. Nope, because once you put a wrench on that old plumbing thingamabobber all bets are off, initiate improbability drive honkies.

What made all of this that much more fun initially when we bought the house was that the main water shut off valve didn't actually shut the water off to the whole house. It reduced the water coming in to a mere trickle but a trickle can be down right exciting when we are talking about open plumbing orifice's. The ghetto solution was to turn the valve off and then turn the water on at the utility sink thereby reducing the water pressure to nil and making it impossible for water to go above the basement. This wasn't the first project and by no means think that I with my complete ignorance of all things useful did this. Nope we called a plumber who then said that we had to have the city come out and mark and check that the shut off at the street was working. Once that was done we had a new shut off valve installed and all was once again as kosher as dill pickles. The first adventure in plumbing occurred when gave a facelift to our bathroom a little nip tuck if you will. I was removing wall paper one day when low and behold I found a large discolored spot on the plaster wall that adjoins the plumbing for the shower. Ahhh yes the beauty of wallpaper and it's ability to hide any and all imperfections that may be going on. Fixing your plumbing shouldn't be that big of a deal unless your plumbing looks more like a torture machine for the Spanish inquisition. You think I'm kidding don't you? Well here.
As you can see we have two handles to work the shower and two separate handles below to work the spout for the tub and lastly a handle in the middle to close the drain on the tub. It just so happens that this style of plumbing was probably discontinued about 50 years ago due to the fact that you probably needed a civil engineering degree and a small army of lackeys to actually get anything fixed. Eventually we found out that the cold water stem (the do hickey that stops the water from flowing to your shower head) was leaking and that we needed new seals. The only problem no one makes these anymore, the solution put a bunch of waxy ropey looking stuff called packing in the stem and pray to as many Gods as you can remember. It just so happens that Vishnu was the winner.

Onward to glory friends, because we are at last entering into the the utility sink adventure. So we have this sink right, going to set up this sink, get some system that will go from the washer hookups to the faucet handles and then get something that will connect the existing drain to the new utility sink. On the first trip my father-in-law and I befriend an unsuspecting teenage clerk named Nick little did Nick know that after this little fiasco I wasn't going to forget his name. Two hardware store trips into this ordeal we had all the pieces to connect the faucet to the hookups and the drain to the sink but when we hooked it all up water came squirting out of the cold water faucet like a tiny little baby boy lets go when you change his diaper. At this point we realize that the fiber washer that was inside the little nut thingy that holds the stemamabobber had degraded to the point that it was no longer stopping the water when the hookup was open and the faucet turned off. After some precursor diggings, pokings and cursings the Dremel in all of it's high whining glory is brought out to do things man style. That's right this thing was so gone we had to take a Dremel sanding attachment to it, even then it still took about 5-10 minutes of work to get it out all the while hoping that we weren't sanding the threads right off the nut. The third trip saw me buying a washer that looked like it was going to work until I of course got home reassembled everything and once again was pissed on. Trip four, the trip to end all trips saw me buying an assortment of washers, at this point it was either fix it or go take a shower over at the neighbors. Did it work? Well I didn't shower at the neighbors but I almost didn't have hot water and that's just another story.

So part of this little fiasco was that SG no longer wanted the washer to drain into the utility sink. She found it unclean or something so we got another tube to extend the existing drainage tube to the hole in the basement floor. No problems there right? Well on Sunday SG started doing some laundry at about 8pm, by 9pm I wanted to take a shower only to find that there was no hot water. Chalking this up to me intermittently turning the water off and on mixed with using hot water made me think that maybe we had just used all of the hot water through out the day and the shutting the water on and off stopped the hot water heater from heating more water. Besides by 12:30am or so I hot water, no stink no foul right? Fast forward to Monday when SG tries to run the same load again, I in my neurotic bustling went downstairs to put away some stuff noticed that the washer was still running and didn't seem to progress on this whole washing of the clothes thing. I call down the fury by yelling up to SG that the washer didn't seem to be working. Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp down SG comes to scowl at the washer and then scowl at me as if I somehow broke the washer when I installed this sink. After being called a lurker,

Main Entry: lurk
Pronunciation: 'l&rk
Function: intransitive verb
Etymology: Middle English; akin to Middle High German luren to lie in wait -- more at LOWER
1 a : to lie in wait in a place of concealment especially for an evil purpose b : to move furtively or inconspicuously c : to persist in staying
2 a : to be concealed but capable of being discovered; specifically : to constitute a latent threat b : to lie hidden

of which how could I be if I was in front of her and five feet to the left I will never know, I went upstairs and got the manual for the washer at which point we find out that the drainage tube has to be higher than the water level in the washer otherwise the washer will never fill. HUZZAH for modern machinery.