The last few months in review, part 2, or Fun with old pipes!!

The other huge issue we've been dealing with over the last 2 months has involved plumbing. Hopefully, as of last night, everything has been resolved, but it took a lot of time, money, and we saw a little more than we'd like to of our plumber. Not to say that he's not a nice guy (he's actually great, and has tons of funny stories) but generally the plumber isn't someone you want to be a frequent guest.

March 26: This entire ordeal began with a really bad clog in the kitchen sink. I noticed it had been backing up frequently, taking forever to drain... finally one day it refused to go down entirely. So Adam and I decided to attempt to fix it by removing the existing corroded old p-trap and rodding it out. Easy enough, right? Haha, nothing is ever easy at Bungalow4865. When trying to loosen a super tight connection on the old trap, Adam ended up cracking the corroded trap on the J part of the p-trap, so it was off to Lowes.

At the hardware store, in addition to a new trap, I also bought one of those big rodding reels that attaches to a power drill. So after some serious rodding out of the pipe going to the drain, we put on the new trap and hoped for the best. Nope, still clogged. Gah! Time to call the plumber.

March 27: Matt the Plumber came the next afternoon and rodded out twice before he got it to clear. Finally! $95 and about an hour's work, not too bad. But not 5 minutes after he left, I happened to go down into the basement and noticed water dripping into the utility sink from directly above:

Apparently when he rodded out the pipes, he knocked all the gunk loose that was apparently plugging yet another leak in a pipe that went down into the basement ceiling and into the main drain. This began my theory that our entire house is held together by Polish cooking grease. I called him and he came right back, and promised to come out the next day. The plan was to create a new set of pipes going down from the kitchen sink to the main drain with PVC, leaving the old iron pipe in the wall (highlighted in red) so we could just leave it or drywall over it.

March 28: $500 later, Matt replaced all of the pipes coming from the kitchen sink, making sure the replacement pipes were properly pitched, which would increase the flow and prevent it from backing up in the future. It was almost back pitched, which probably was the biggest contributor to the backup. He also installed a pseudo-vent under the sink, which should have been vented in the first place. That would stop the drain from gurgling as well. It worked great, and we had no problems, at least for a month.

April 26: I had gone to bed, and Adam was in the basement finishing up some laundry. All of a sudden I hear yelling and the words "Oh no!! Flood!!" In my half-sleep delirium I went downstairs, and saw that the stupid P-trap under the utility sink had come undone. It came undone at the slip nut I had fixed months ago, which I had finally cemented with PVC cement. I had noticed that the laundry room utility sink seemed to be backing up more than usual when we did laundry. The washing machine "out" basically dumps a large quantity of water into the utility sink very quickly, and it must have finally come undone with the weight of the backed-up hot water. I told Adam I'd fix it the next day.

April 27: When I got home from work, I steeled myself to re-cement the stupid P-trap once and for all. Maybe it was the fumes of the cement, maybe it was fate, but something caused me to look over at the area where the PVC coming from the P-trap connected to the iron pipe to the main drain, and it had cracked:

It must have been the heavy weight from the backed-up water sitting in the pipes under the utility sink...now I am regretting not spending the money initially not to just get everything redone. Thankfully, I quickly realized that fixing this was beyond my meager plumbing capabilities. So we called Matt (again) to fix the cracked pipe and rod out whatever was causing the backup, and he came out the next day.

April 28: Matt replaces the pipe under the sink. It was $115, not too shabby. Unfortunately, I was on a conference call and Matt spoke mostly to Adam. Matt thought the sink was draining properly, but I guess he didn't test it with the large quantity of water we get when the washing machine empties into the sink.

(A few days later): I notice the utility sink is still completely backing up when we do laundry, and it's still coming up in both sinks. I call Matt again to see what we need to do to fix it - either put the washing machine "out" its own pipe going directly down to the drain, or modifying the existing pipes so the washing machine / utility sink pipe went directly down into the drain rather than the "T" fitting.

May 10: Finally, to the tune of $300, Matt comes out and gives the washing machine its own dedicated "out" pipe going to the main drain:

While Matt was here, he also fixed slow drains in both bathroom sinks. He also replaced the iron (galvanized steel?) pipes under the basement sink so that it's easier for me to fix on my own if necessary.

So all of this plumbing was quite an ordeal. I sincerely hope we can close the books on this. I just hope the rest of the pipes in the house manage to stay together for awhile... I've REALLY seen enough of Matt the Plumber for awhile.

The last few months in review - part 1

Since I haven't posted here in eons, here's a brief synopsis of the last few months at Bungalow 4865.

1. Had fancy energy-saving blinds installed in the living room and dining room.

I had been wanting to replace the yucky, yellowed broken blinds for a long time, and ended up getting new blinds in December. We chose Hunter Douglas's Duette Architella honeycomb shades. They definitely weren't cheap, but did qualify for an energy-saving tax credit on my 2010 federal taxes, which was pretty cool. We opted for the top-down, bottom-up lift control system, which gives the blinds a super neat, streamlined look without hardware or cords. As part of the tax credit, they had to be professionally installed, but that was fine with me, since I seem to have issues with the whole "measure twice, cut once" thing.

Since it was a fairly cold winter overall, it has been difficult to measure the actual savings in heating costs. But when Adam measured inside and outside the closed blinds with an infrared thermometer, it was about a 12 degree difference, which is huge. It made sitting by the living room window noticeably much more pleasant - when the wind blows hard in the winter, we could usually feel a pretty nasty draft on the back of our necks. So we're pretty happy with them overall, even though Adam's a little disappointed that I didn't opt for the remote controlled lifting system.

2. Painted in the living room and dining room.

Before the blinds were installed, we painted both rooms and did considerable patching. After much discussion and color sampling, we went with two complimentary beige/taupe/khaki shades from Behr. We also painted all the trim and molding a much brighter white. I'm very happy with how it turned out - especially the way it looks against the crisp white trim.

3. Finished patching the ceiling in the basement bathroom, painted the walls, and added some new hardware.

Drywalling upside down proved to be pretty challenging, but it managed to come out pretty well. We also took the opportunity to paint the ceiling with a couple of coats of mildew-resistant paint. Prior to painting the walls, we also used the same mildew-resistant stuff as a primer. The color was a light brown (heh - sensing a theme here?) and looks really nice with the shower curtain. Yes, the entire bathroom design is based on a shower curtain I purchased from Target that I am sure is no longer in production and will eventually need to be tossed.

The bathroom facelift also gave me the opportunity to try my hand at some electrical work. I purchased the new sconces on either side of the mirrored cabinet and installed them, which involved relocating the holes for the previous fixtures. This was straightforward enough, meaning no one got electrocuted and no major damage was done to the house. Of course, nothing's ever easy at Bungalow 4865 - the walls are not at 90 degree angles so it took some effort to get the sconces to lay flush against the wall. There were also some issues with the walls, which may or may not have involved drilling into conduit in an attempt to hang a towel rack, but we abandoned that and moved it to a new location.