House Made

Beth here.

Merideth and I have not had more than a trickle of cold water from our kitchen sink for the past three years. There was plenty of hot water, but cold? For cold water, one had to visit the bathroom sink or the hose. We tried everything we could think of, namely checking to make sure the cold water cutoff was open, but came up with a blank and learned to like lukewarm drinking water for lack of plumber-calling inclination.

We’re not proud of our poor problem-solving skills, but there just seemed to be bigger things to do. We had to fix windows, level stairs, landscape the yard, and watch Project Runway.

When my dad last visited from Colorado in October, he and I had a lively “discussion” about the cause of the no cold water situation. His contention was that the faucet was broken. Mine was that it was something in the pipes, an argument based solely on the fact that I replaced the faucet 2 1/2 years ago, and there wasn’t cold water on the old one, either. 

Spurred on by my need to prove my father wrong, I got under the sink last weekend to stare at the pipes. I did the only thing I really know how to do: I turned off the cold water and unscrewed the connection to the faucet. For want of anything else to do, I looked at the connection. There was a rock in it. I removed the rock and put everything back together. We have cold water now.   This may be the only house project that was easier than I thought it would be, and that just made my week.

Also, I’m all warm and fuzzy with smugness because my dad was wrong.

Beth here.

It’s time for more product advertising for companies that do not pay us. (I can never decide if this makes us more honest or just kind of dumb. Anyway.) We are currently four days in on the new toilet, and we are both giant fans of the Cadet 3 by American Standard.  It came highly recommended by the two Home Depot employees who were helping us (I know!  TWO guys helped us out!  It’s unheard of, but extremely welcome.), both of whom had been very impressed by the Cadet 3 commercial which featured a bowl full of golf balls that flushed on the first try.  Indeed, the packaging tells us we can throw away our plunger, but I think we’ll keep it for the other lesser drains in our household that cannot effectively rid our lives of those pesky golf balls.

Truth be told, my germ-fearing self was more impressed by the Cadet’s anti-microbial surface that purports to clean itself.  This will not stop me (or our housecleaner) from regularly cleaning our Cadet, but it’s nice to think we have a little help.

While I do not wish toilet troubles on my worst enemy, the Cadet 3 is a good choice if such a plague occurs.

Note: That’s not our bathroom. But how nice does that toilet look on wood floors?

what you get when you tear out the toilet

First of all, if you have more than one bathroom, there is never any reason to fear plumbing. I admit, toilet repair always makes me a little nervous, but that’s just because we’ve only ever had ONE. Nature pretty much limits the number of hours you can spend on a toilet project when there’s just the one toilet. That said, fixing anything plumbing-related is pretty straightforward. We’ve yet to find an un-doable plumbing project or to turn the house into the 8:15 at the Bellagio.

So anyway, in our last episode, I was getting ready to replace the toilet tank. That, as you may have guessed, turned into replacing the whole toilet. That’s fine as we hated the old toilet. It was kinda…foofy.

Now, when some P.O. installed the foofy toilet, he/she had to fill in the original tile at the base with basic white tile. Fine. But the real kickers are these: 1. See the closet bolts poking up there? There’s no flange holding them in place, just the wax ring. The toilet was in no way secured to the floor. 2. See that triscuit box? No that was not a commode-installation snack. That was folded up into a shim.

Oh, did I mention we live in earthquake country?

So today I’d planned to make major headway on the bathroom. As I was measuring the distance between the trim and the waterpipe, I noticed a drip on the bottom of the toilet. It looked like the tank bolt was leaking, so I replaced it to no effect. The INCREDIBLY knowledgeable and helpful plumbing department guy confirmed my worst fear: most likely a cracked tank. Tried a couple of various configurations of rubber washers and gently tightened nuts, and still: drip drip drip.

All progress stalled while we (tomorrow) install a new toilet tank.  So freakin not happy right now.

Beth did the lion’s share of the work this weekend and boy was she a rockstar. More about that tomorrow as I want to wait until the project is done to report on it.  In the meantime, just believe that she kicks much ass.

Now, in addition to resto work, we ocassionally have generic homeowner (ha! I just accidentally typed “homoowner!”) chores to tackle. I hate this kind of stuff simply because it gets in the way of my restoration project list. This weekend we had a plumbing issue. I refuse to even think of giving a plumber a $200 minimum for basic “under the counter” type plumbing. I figure if Ace Hardware sells the part, they figure a regular person can execute the repair. So far this theory has proved accurate.

This weekend, and I’ll go ahead and spoil it for you, everything worked out fine. But the point of this whole little post is that plumbing work, particularly bathroom plumbing work, carries with it an additional level of terror because in our small house, there is just the one bathroom. More importantly, there is just the one toilet. And this weekend, I pulled out and replaced all the inner-workings of our solitary commode.

So in a situation like this you have a. an emergency plumbing repair need; b. a definite and limited time span in which to complete it; and c. a gamble on whether you can fix it at all without the help of a professional. (For those of you who think we could make emergency arrangements in the back yard bushes, you don’t understand just how small and thoroughly visible to the neighbors our yard is. I might as well go out front and pee in the gutter. Same. Thing.) So a plumbing fix is a mad race against nature! And for some reason, just knowing that tends to…well…tends to make nature more…um…active?

So far everything has always come together in a timely fashion but the extra stress of having to make repairs to the only lav has made us realize that a half bath would really do a lot for our peace of mind. There’s no room for one (easily) in this house, but in the next? If it doesn’t start with 1.5 baths I can safely say it will end up with 1.5 baths as soon as possible.

Oh, and when our neighbors renovated their bathroom, they lived with a porta-potty in the backyard for two months. Ack!

Beth here. 

The toilet has been an informal water feature for the past few weeks, constantly running with a trickling sound desirable in fountains, but disturbing in waste receptacles. I had called a plumber as we had decided that you don’t really want to mess with your one toilet, but after receiving an informal, expensive quote from the plumber, Merideth took the plunge (pun actually not intended).

While I was working on the garden in the front of the house, Merideth came out and announced to the neighborhood, “I am the master of the toilet!” This would possibly have raised eyebrows on other streets, but our neighbors are enthusiastic and understanding about our home repairs, so she received pats on the back and congratulations from all who were outside. She replaced the ballcock thingy, AND put in a new shutoff valve, as ours was broken.

All in all, she is a rock star AND the master (or mistress?) of the toilet. All hail Merideth!

So it turns out that not every weekend is devoted to the joys of house restoration. Some weekends…some Friday mornings in fact…are devoted to cursing the kitchen faucet which can’t possibley have decided to actually, physically break and no longer turn on water. but oh yes it can. Some freakin metal piece broke off. Broke right off.

Fortunately Beth is all feeling that the underside of the kitchen sink is her domain now. So after trying to repair the hateful faucet thing only to find that, despite new cartridge, O rings, grease, and sealant, it preferred to spurt annoyingly from the base, she installed a brand new faucet and sprayer.

The current one is certainly not the final one. Not the lovely goose-necked thing we’ll install when we reno the kitchen counters and sink. But it IS a delight of basic chrome whose sprayer works beautifully, tap flows strongly, and yes, whose handle turns both on and off and AND hot and cold without one’s throwing one’s full body weight against it for torque.

beth vs. the insinkerator
Originally uploaded by merideth.

So I called my dad to ask him if, when your garbage disposal goes enhhhhhhhhh and then stops, whether you should call someone to fix it or just go get a new one.

He said, go get a new one and “you can probably get Beth to get under there and install it.”

Oh, how right he was. After picking up our new Insinkerator Badger 444 from Home Depot, Beth said “I’m pretty excited about this project.” When we got home, she tore out the old one, installed the new one, and had the thing spinning its evil blades well before I’d unloaded all the groceries. Very impressive as always…and look how she’s getting a little tan from the yardwork.

P.S. Should you decide to install an Insinkerator yourself, the directions don’t tell you that you need to remove (by banging a hammer on the end of screwdriver), a plug that stops up the dishwasher connector. You’ll notice a problem when your dishwasher fails to drain and you open it with a “what the?!” Fortunately, this inability to guess that a plug exists has happened to many home diyers and simple instructions for the fix are available online (seriously, bang it out with a hammer and screwdriver). Lord love the internet.