Sunday, January 29, 2012

Proving "Normal" is just a setting on the washing machine...

Remember back on new year's eve, when I discovered leaky plumbing? Well, we found the source of the problem after ripping out the ceiling of the breakfast room. It was thought to be a bad overflow valve on the bathtub. Well this week, we had the plumber out to fix the problem. He was here for a few hours, he replaced the valve, and re-plumbed the tub drain while he was at it, and in the process he cut out an old, arbitrary drain trap. It seemed like a pretty straightforward job. And it was... Provided that it had been done correctly and completely.

Needless to say, it would not even be worth mentioning if "correctly" and "completely" were adjectives achieved during the course of the work. Of course, following my life as a grand cosmic experiment in the exercise of Murphy's Law, we know that it didn't go down as it should.

When the plumber cut the drain line to remove the arbitrary drain trap, he left the end of the old drain line open and used new pipe to connect the new tub work to the line down the wall... But here's the thing... The tub isn't the only thing that fed into that drain line. (A fact I discovered the next day upon heading to the basement to work on refinishing a chair.) Yeah... I discovered water in the basement from a pipe that was cut off above the main floor of the house. So, I turned off the water supply to the whole house and called the plumbers.

As it turns out, the bathroom sink also feeds into that drain line, or at least it did, until the plumber cut it off. I waited for the plumber to call back... He didn't. I shut off the lines that feed that bathroom sink, turned the water to the rest of the house back on, in order to minimize the amount which I was doomed to be inconvenienced, and waited... Still the plumber didn't call back.

Knowing that the plumbers are known for charging extra to come out on a weekend call, (a charge that most likely applies regardless of whether or not the problem is related to shoddy work that they did in the first place) and that I'd already wasted a whole day waiting on them anyway, I called back, stating that I had isolated the problem, and that they could wait until Monday to send out someone to fix the line correctly.

So we wait... And carry on about our business, knowing that some other problem is lurking just around the corner.

2 comments:

bun(s) said...

and the hits keep coming. You're like a sparring partner of life right now; taking whatever it doles out, refusing to go down or give in...

at what point do you "just have to laugh?"

Lizzle said...

Oh, I laugh at the folly of my existence CONSTANTLY.

People around me probably think I'm nuts because I will just be sitting quietly, thinking about the laundry list of problems big and small, and if I didn't bust out in a fit of laughter, I know it could easily turn to me bawling in a bathroom somewhere... And nobody likes the girl who has to excuse herself to go bawl her eyes out in the bathroom. So I'll settle for being the weirdo who randomly busts out in semi-maniacal laughter.

...Whatever gets you through the day!