It Was A Monday

I like to paint. Walls, woodwork, ceilings, shingles ~ you name it and I can paint it. The prep can be tedious, and the painting itself requires attention to detail, but I love the sense of accomplishment when the job is finished.

So when my daughter needed a bit of touch up on some woodwork, I volunteered. A couple weeks ago I applied spackle to the spots. Yesterday I had time to do what should have been about twenty minutes of painting.

It was Monday. I should have known things would not go smoothly....

I am a firm believer that paint can be used as long as its usable, no matter how old it is. Experts at the paint counter have tried to talk me out of this belief but to no avail. The paint will often outlive the can, which was the case with the unmarked can of trim paint I brought up from the cellar at my daughter's house yesterday. I opened the can and started stirring, when the can started leaking. I am not unaccustomed to this problem so I had set the can on a plastic bag [always set a paint can on something that protects the surface below because you never know]. The can was in worse shape than I expected so I needed reinforcement plastic bags while I found another container for the paint.

The search sent me to the cabinet under the kitchen sink. I figured while I was down there I would look for the organic drain cleaner I remembered buying because the bathroom sink was draining slowly.

Everything was wet. Uh oh. The drain inset in the kitchen sink was loose again and water had seeped through to below. I pulled everything out from the cabinet, pitched everything that was waterlogged, and placed a bucket under the drain to catch any other drips until we could get someone in to fix it.

I then poured the trim paint into a plastic bucket, but before I started painting I thought I could unclog the bathroom sink with a plunger. After all, the painting would only take a few minutes and I had water on my mind....

It was a good plan in theory. Unfortunately, when I started plunging the sink water started backing up in the bathtub. Huh. This development seemed to indicate a larger problem.

I called my daughter's neighbor who has rescued us from these situations over the years. I thought he could recommend a plumber. The call went to voicemail, so I called Ken [working in New Hampshire this week] to see what he thought. Well, he could check things out on Friday. That wouldn't work. I made this mess and I couldn't leave my daughter without a working bathroom sink or tub.

An hour and a half had passed. I needed help. I caught another neighbor as he was coming home from work, a second person who has helped us with home repairs over the years [we were fortunate for years to have such skilled neighbors, and now they graciously help my daughter]. I asked him if he could recommend a plumber. He asked what the problem was. I explained the situation, and he said he could take a look.

It turns out that all the plumbing was involved in the problem. As he worked, the kitchen sink started gurgling, too, which meant the clog was somewhere down the line. He took the kitchen sink apart and used rags to stop up the kitchen pipe, the bathtub pipe and both drains in the bathroom sink. He plunged. He adjusted rags. He went back and forth between the bathroom and kitchen, and he plunged some more. The clog finally let go and water started draining in the bathroom. Woohoo!

He got the bathroom all put back together and went to work on the kitchen. I said that we'd need to have that drain inset looked at soon, and he said he thought he had a replacement part in his truck...and sure enough he did. He took care of that problem on the spot. He had the part because another neighbor up the street had just given him extra parts he had left over from the kitchen counter work he does.

Sighhhhhh. I was so grateful for his help. I couldn't imagine telling my daughter upon her return from a twelve-hour workday that I had inadvertently clogged all her plumbing.

The neighbor had said to me when I first explained the problem that it wasn't the end of the world. It felt that way because I didn't know how to fix the mess. As I watched him work I could see how satisfying it was for him to make things work again. I feel that way when I know how to do something and figure out how to fix a problem...

which tells me I should stick to painting.