I Plumbered It Real Good

Sunday night. Why in the world would I honestly believe that Sunday night was the best time to begin a plumbing project? I must have been channeling the spirit of my plumbing impaired father for I believed that it would be a simple adjustment and would not cause me half a week of grief and angst.

It was Sunday night the 30th of October. At 10:00 PM was brushing my teeth and getting ready to go to bed. The sink was running and as it had done for a number of years was beginning to pool water up in the basin. None of this was new, unexpected or in the least unusual but for some reason that night it bothered me.

I mentioned it. "Sink is backing up" That's all. Just an idea, a simple thought. A seed. Why should I have to deal with that... Can't it be easily fixed? Should I continue to have it annoy me when I can fix it and not have it cluttering up my life anymore? "No," was the the correct answer but not the one I chose.

The issue was that hair had gathered around the sink drain stopper. You know that little chrome thing with the long plastic part that pops up and drops down? So the solution is simple enough. Pop it out. That's it just pop it out of the sink and remove the gathered wad of hair. Simple enough right?

Wrong-o. BUZZ!! "Nay," says the sink stopper manufactures. "Sorry homeowner, this part is a permanent and required fixture of our sink that cannot be removed without a pipe wrench, a set of child sized hands and the ability to wrap your body into a sink cabinet like a human pretzel." Of course this will not deter the persistent AKA crazy stupid people who only want a sink to work like it was intended free of hair clogs.

They will begin to undo the pipes in an effort to loosen them enough to get at this stopper clamping mechanism barricaded in the rear of the bathroom cabinet behind a strong fortification of iron pipes, copper pipes and uncooperative plastic fittings. This will be a mistake.

At 10:25 I found myself holding various sections of the pipe in my hands with a giant gaping hole in my sink. This hole was displaying a clear view of a wet bathroom cabinet if viewed from above. The stopper was out, the pipe was clear and the wife was in bed wishing with all her heart that this was not happening. The pipe was now the way I wanted it to be, that is free of stopper, and the bathroom sink was now completely unusable.

Why do we do these things to ourselves? Why do we persist when we know that the sacrifices required from the the plumbing gods are much steeper than any gain we could possibly get from antagonizing them? Right, because we are men and we are stupid.

Anyway. Four days later and many hours of toil behind me I now have what I wanted. A sink free of the stopper.

"I got it!"
"Nice. It flows good too...but..."
"But what?"
"You know...uh, things can fall down the drain pretty easy now."
"Oh crap. I hadn't thought of that."