At Least I Got His Broom

Preface: I really like my house. I enjoy home ownership. I like to cut my grass in the summertime. There's something very satisfying about being able to call this place my own. This house is mine, dangit. That being said...

I'm going to bring back everyone's favorite designation... the Room 113 Chach of the Day is none other than the jerk who sold us this house. He was horrible to deal with in the purchasing of the home... he was even more horrible to deal with after we purchased the home... he didn't honor his word to us on tons and tons of different levels... some of his junk is still in my basement because there's nothing I can do with it... of the dozens and dozens of items he left behind in the house and garage, the only one of any use to us is a broom. He actually came to the house 2 weeks after we got the keys and asked for his broom. I told him he could have his broom if he took all the other &*%# that he said he was gonna take before he left... needless to say, I still have the broom. (Just let me hold onto this grudge...)

Homeownership isn't always fun. Growing up, I always knew that maintaining a home was hard work. My dad shared that lesson with me early on. There's always something to do. Maintenance is important. If projects/problems aren't regularly being attended to as they happen, it doesn't take long for things to spiral out of control. Plus, my house is 106 years old.

One of the many things on my list of things to do/fix is my bathtub/shower drain. It drains... slowly... to say the least. About a year-and-a-half ago, I snaked it out and pulled out the world's largest and most disgusting cluster of hair. It was obvious that this was not all Robyn's and my hair... I won't go into any more unnecessary detail. Let's just say that this drain had obviously been neglected for quite some time, based upon my unclogging findings. It still never quite drained right. It's been on my list for quite some time now.

This weekend, I decided I was going to fix some stuff. So I went to the hardware store, bought a snake (everybody needs a snake), and went to work. 5 minutes later, I had found no giant hairball, but I did have a sufficient amount of water all over my kitchen... the master bath is above the kitchen. I busted something... didn't know what... but obviously, something is wrong when there is water flowing through the kitchen ceiling. There are no access panels in the entire house... all the plumbing is behind plaster walls. So the only way to figure out what went wrong was to tear cut open the ceiling. Woo hoo.

Thankfully, I have some very handy friends. Randy came over and cut a hole in my ceiling and quickly asked for a bucket, as there was lots of standing water above the ceiling. Not good. Turns out, this pipe had been "repaired" before. The former owner obviously didn't care. An 8' section of drainpipe was running uphill and was comprised of 4 different pipes, all rigged together. There was 2" lead pipe, 2" rotten cast-iron pipe, 1.5" PVC, and 1.5" rotten cast-iron... might as well have been duct-taped together. And it was all caked with poo/mud/nastiness. Randy hooked me up... I now have an 8' section of all-PVC drainpipe that runs downhill--amazing idea... taking advantage of gravity...
I took a 10-minute shower and there was never standing water in the tub. This is a vast improvement from 10-minute showers over the past couple years. I kinda got used to feeling like I was swimming in the shower. But I can get used to this... it's better this way...

Now I just need to get started on the other million projects that need to be attended to. Homeownership, baby. There's nothing like it!

In other news... The Tobe has officially worn a tie more than I have since he was born. The official tally for times a tie has been worn since last summer: Toby 1, Daddy 0. He's gonna get all the chicks at Tye's wedding.