My phone is on
vibrant when I’m at work. The consequence of this is when I get a call on my
cell phone—usually from K—my coworkers know as soon as I appear to be talking
to myself in my office, they should perk up their ears if they want to hear
something humorous. Yesterday was no exception.
K only calls
me with crazy concerns. There was the superhuman spider—who wouldn’t die as K
threw shoes at it from across the living room. Then there was the time he was
certain a bird had pooped on Super-Sophie’s head, and wanted me to come home to
clean it off. Yesterday’s conversation (as heard by my co-workers) went a
little something like this:
What do you
mean it cracked? What kind of cracking sound?
Tell me what
you mean by leaking? Is it dribbling or spraying?
Is it just in
the shower, or all over the bathroom?
Could you
fill a cup in less than a minute? In fifteen minutes? In an hour?
‘I don’t
know’ really doesn’t help me.
Do you
actually hear water in the walls, or water moving through the pipes?
As I quickly
packed my laptop, one of my co-workers came in and said, “So, going home to staunch
the flood?”
Yep. That’s
exactly what I was doing. The water faucet in the shower had cracked when K turned
it, and after he failed to make it stop in the first THIRTY minutes, he thought
his mother might have better luck.
As I was
driving the three miles home, I was trying to call J—who is more inclined to
make a difference in any kind of home repair situation, but I knew that getting
in touch with him was likely not to happen, since he had a crazy day planned at
work. After several failed attempts, I figured if I could keep things under
control until he got home in a couple of hours, it would be a good save.
I don’t
fancy myself any kind of handyman, but I’ve watched HGTV, people! I’ve seen the
home repair shows on PBS. I figured I could, at least, keep everything under
control until J got home.
Once at home
I spent the first two minutes studying the downstairs immediately surrounding
the boys’ shower. Holmes on Homes has shown me what water damage looks like. I
didn’t see any. There was, however, water in the boys’ bathroom. K had decided
that showering was more important than our plumbing emergency, and had just moved
his operation to my shower. I started throwing towels down.
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| Where were you when I needed you??? |
I studied the
situation through dribbles from the faucet and a fine spray from the handle. The
water leakage wasn’t torrential by any means, but by now it’d been going for
about an hour, and the bathroom was wet. I was fairly certain he’d broken the
handle, and not the actual shower components or the pipes, so that was good,
but depending on what part of the shower handle he had broken, it could require
us to rip out the wall to replace.
I needed to
figure out what part was broken. I also needed to be able to stop the water
flow. The outermost part of the handle needed to come off, and I needed two
screwdrivers and a wrench-like thing. Don’t ask me what it’s called. This is
where I summarize another thirty minutes of searching in the world’s messiest
(and most tool-laden) garage—it’s J’s world, after all—and tell you that
finding tools that I really can’t describe in a tool chest system of J’s that I
cannot understand, was…. Interesting. Finally I was equipped with an undersized
Phillips, a flathead, and some pliers. That’s was as good as it was going to
get.
Back in the
bathroom, I was trying to decide what piece of the faucet/handle needed to come
off first to begin the disassembly process. Figuring the very front/top piece
would be a logical place to start, I attempted to pry it off. It wouldn’t
budge. A dozen years of soap or water or something had that thing STUCK. K, who
was back now to provide me emotional support, suggested that we just rip the
whole thing off. I had no idea what to do next, but the one thing I knew in my
heart was ripping anything off of anything else did NOT sound like a good idea.
I attempted to remove some other pieces (with more success) but was unable to
loosen or budge the front piece which was barring me from actually removing anything
else.
It was
certain now, though, that the water was not leaking in the walls (I could see
about two inches around the shower handle unit in the wall). But I couldn’t get
the handle to budge, in order to get to the metal piece that regulated water
flow, and therefore couldn’t get it to shut off. Plan B was shutting water off to the house. I
remember how J had to do this at the old house to fix the kitchen plumbing, and
that main water shutoff had been in the basement and nicely labeled. We don’t
have a basement in this house and nothing is labeled.
In other
words, where the hell should I start?
I checked
the garage, the storage area attached to the back of the house, and even the
attic. The only thing left was the utility closet with the water heater and
furnace. I checked in there, and had an idea what was return pipes and gas
lines, but couldn’t really identify a water shut off. There was no
spicket-looking thing like there had been in our old house. The only thing I
had left was an unlabeled black lever—buried in the wall of the utility closet,
behind the furnace and the water heater—basically out of my reach, unless I wanted
to climb over the furnace. K was following me, and since he is much skinnier
than I am, I charged him with climbing in the utility closet to turn the
unidentified lever, and threw him some gloves (thank goodness I could find
those in J’s tools) to keep the fiberglass insulation from embedding in his
skin. He made it to the back of the closet, and attempted to turn the lever.
It wouldn’t
budge. We tried some more, and got it to move about twenty degrees. That was
it. It wasn’t going to work. We tried to move it back to the open position, and
it wouldn’t budge that way, either. Then K and I decided to take out some aggression
and beat on it until it moved. Finally, after another 30 minutes, we got the
damn thing moved back to where it started.
Now I had
thirty more minutes until J got home, for the love of God. THIS is when he
returned my call. I laid out the story for him, and he told me two things: 1)
the main water shutoff for the house was likely buried somewhere in the yard (“slab
construction means you usually had to shut the water off at the street level,
Sarah”) and I should just wait until he got home.
Where was
Holmes or Bob Villa when I needed them? And why the hell would anyone bury the
main water shut off for the house in the yard???
So, I moved
to water control in the bathroom. I had most everything cleaned up and controlled
by the time J came home. And do you want to know what he did as soon as he got
there and shed his work clothes? He went into the bathroom, assessed that the
top/front of the shower handle wouldn’t pop off, and ripped the thing off the
wall.
I shit you
not.
He then
grabbed the pliers, and shut off the water. He then picked up the small piece
of plastic that had fallen off the handle when he wrenched it off, and said, “That’s
your cracked piece. I’ll run by the hardware store, and pick up a new one.”
J spent
twenty dollars and ten minutes fixing something that had plagued me for two
hours. I decided that all I was doing for the rest of the evening (because it
was well into evening now) drinking a beer and watching cable movies.
All of this
to say two things—watching DIY projects has done nothing for me. Don’t fool
yourself. When confronted with a minor water emergency, these shows won’t help
you. I think this realization is even worse than the confirmation that the
House Hunters show is staged.
My second
point—lots of these things have been happening to us as of late. After all, it’s
June (and we all know what that means for me). So, I’m taking a little mental
break from blogging (and life, in general) next week. Don’t worry—I have guest
posters lined up for the coming week—thanks to my lovely fellow writers at
Sprocket Ink-- so you won’t be left unattended.
I’ll be
relaxing and avoiding any type of fixing of anything during that time. Also? I won’t
be watching HGTV.
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| Oh, HHI, I don't know how to quit you. |
