Look, I know I have in the past said that there's nothing much more to a plumber's job than a willingness to enter uncomfortable small spaces and get dirty, but I'll at least admit that the secret to their job is knowing enough to enter any uncomfortably small space only once.

I, on the other hand, seem to be incapable of working on pipes without breaking something in addition to what I was trying to fix. For example, the last time I repaired the rotted drain pipes under the kitchen sink (in November 2018), I ended up needing to cut the still-serviceable sink tailpiece to get it to fit with the new pieces. But I cut it a little too short; it ended up just long enough to barely hold a washer with no room to spare. We got away with that for a while, but gravity won out eventually. So this week, when I spotted a leak for the second time in a month, I went to Home Depot, bought a replacement, brought it home, cut it to an appropriate length, went to screw it tight... and promptly broke the sink strainer basket.

Ok, technically I didn't break the strainer. I just torqued it hard enough to dislodge the old plumbers putty that was sealing it in place. Without the seal, it leaked much worse than the problem I was fixing. Too bad I didn't have any fresh plumber's putty. So another trip to Home Depot was in order.

The one smart thing I did was clean the old putty out out of the sink before getting in my car, and while doing that, I discovered that the nut holding the old strainer in place was also stripped and the whole strainer would need to be replaced. (How could that have happened? See November 2018 again.) Whew. I would have hated to have discovered that only after I came back with fresh plumber's putty. I draw the line at going to Home Depot three times in a day.

Of course, clearing out the old plumber's putty made my hands dirty, so I did what the pandemic conditioned me to do and promptly washed my hands... in the sink that was now missing both a tailpipe and a strainer basket. D'oh. No professional plumber would have made that mistake, either.

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Hour three of trying to replace a dishwasher (hour one of guy grinding stumps just outside the kitchen door), and the latest problem is the new dishwasher is too short to reach the countertop so I have to find some wood to put under the feet to raise it up and to do that I need to pull it back out of the recess but first I have to turn off the water at the street again because the under-cabinet waterline spigot won't fully close but only after I start turning off the master water line at the street do I realize that since yesterday a colony of fire ants has taken residence and because of mud in the hole the master water line won't fully turn off...

So now I'm sitting on the floor in the kitchen struggling not to scratch the ant bites and poison ivy (courtesy of my dogs) on my arms as I contemplate burning the house down.

Does this shit happen to other people?

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Mom has been working to prepare her residential rental property for new tenants, and that means overhauling the upstairs bathtub. The previous tenant used it for dying wool, and now the formerly white tub is very much not white. The tub is in such bad shape that she would probably consider replacing it if not for the fact that it is nearly a century old, made of cast iron, weighs a ton, and will never fit down the stairs. So instead of replacing it, I am resurfacing it. Or at least, I'm supposed to.

This is not a horror story about how an enamel paint job went awry. No, I haven't gotten to that step yet. This is a story about how a bathtub full of water ended up coming through the kitchen ceiling.

Step one in resurfacing the tub requires clearing away the old caulk and scouring the tub clean prior to sanding the entire surface. All of that went reasonably well. It was even surprisingly easy to remove the metal drain and overflow plate considering the tub's age and mistreatment. The problem was that all the water I poured in to rinse out the scouring cleanser somehow missed the drain pipe and instead flowed directly down the interior wall to emerge through the overhead light fixture in the kitchen below. (I wish I could show you a picture here, but I was too panicked by my discovery of the waterfall flowing from the active light fixture to take the time to grab my phone for a selfie.)

My working theory is that too much water pressure dislodged the drain pipe enough that much of the waste water overflowed the crack between pipe and tub. But given that on disassembly for cleaning, the kitchen's florescent light fixture contained what can only be called a "rust puddle," it sure looks like this leak has been dripping for a while. Considering how well the last tenant treated the tub, maybe in this specific case, it's not all my fault?

The silver lining to this otherwise very unwelcome rain cloud is that after a good mopping with every spare towel I could borrow from my aunt who lives nearby, the kitchen floor is now cleaner than it has been in ages. The next tenant might be cooking in the dark, but at least the floor is spotless!

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I woke up to a text from Friend Ken who needed advice regarding his broken range top. "Boy, am I glad I don't have his problems," I thought to myself.

And then my kitchen sink broke.

Somehow, the nut holding the pipe on the strainer basket in the left basin had become completely stripped. As a result, the pipe slid sideways, and the dishwater, instead of draining away to the septic tank, drained into the cabinet.

Mom and I debated calling a plumber, but we ultimately agreed that replacing a sink basket is no big deal. I should be able to handle that repair easily. Unless the locknut nut is rusted in place. Which, of course, this was. Enter the hacksaw! In a tiny cramped space! On my back!

Two hours, one trip to Home Depot, and $17 later, the sink was back together and successfully holding its water. That's when I noticed that the pipe in the right basin had a cracked nut that was also leaking. Grr. Fortunately, I had the replacement parts leftover from a previous repair to the basement sink. So another hour later (in a tiny cramped space, on my back), both sides of the sink were good as new! Almost.

On reinspection, the left basin was leaking again. Thinking it must be because I had used too small a bead of plumbers putty, I unscrewed everything again. That's when I noticed that while reassembling the parts last time, I had accidentally placed the high-tech piece of cardboard (meant to reduce friction between locknut and gasket) above the rubber gasket instead of below it. It turns out that cardboard is terrible at holding water. Who knew?

Maybe I *should* have called a plumber.

Anyway, everything is working as it is supposed to again. So take that, Ken! The ball is back in your court, buddy.

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I just repaired my riding lawnmower by replacing the broken PTO belt. That may not sound hard to do, and it shouldn't have been. However, the Operator's Manual failed to mention anything about the PTO tension spring that had been dislocated when the belt broke. Funny, that. I wouldn't have been able to remove the cutting deck to replace the belt if the spring had been in place, so you'd think that the manufacturer would mention something about it. But no, I had to guess where the spring attached. Mower seems to be working fine, so maybe I guessed correctly.

Before that, I took apart the plumbing for the downstairs sink. This nifty bit of PVC plumbing hasn't been "up to code" since the house's previous owners installed it from leftover pieces of a Mousetrap game. It has never drained quickly, and lately it had barely been draining at all. Fortunately, plumbing is easy when you have the parts (plumbing repairs are almost always a problem of access and strength, not complication), and now my sink is draining better than ever.

I figure I'd've had to pay a mechanic and a plumber at least $200 each to do those jobs, so it's a good thing I could do them myself; I only made $150 in June! ("The check is in the mail," they say. Sigh.)

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Remember a couple of months back when I broke the faucet in my tub so the plumber had to tear apart Mom's bathroom wall to fix it? Yeah, well, Mom decided that since I already had to patch the drywall, I should paint the walls. And while I was making the walls, I should re-grout the tile walls in her shower. And since I had to mix grout anyway, I should replace the tile floor. And since I was going to have to pull up the toilet to replace the floor, I should replace the toilet. And that's how we got here:

The only hitch was -- surprise, surprise -- the bathtub faucet. I removed it to clean it and get at the tile behind it. However, when I put it back together... drip, drip, drip. I really should have known better. Fortunately this repair was as easy as replacing two small gaskets and applying some elbow grease. Which is good, as I had already repainted the walls.

Overall, I'm happy with the work. The shower tiles still look an uneven mess, but I couldn't correct that without re-tiling the shower entirely. There's only so much that one man can do in two weeks. I do have to get my 10 hours of sleep a night, you know.

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For Valentine's Day, my mother gave me a sexually suggestive greeting card featuring Batman. In return, I flooded the guest bathroom.

The diverter, that little knob that sends the water from the tub spout up to the shower head, wasn't doing its job in my shower. So I did what any semi-competent handyman would do: I decided to fix it. All I had to do was unscrew the spout from the wall and replace it, right? What I didn't recognize at the time was that was the premise for every episode of Home Improvement.

A 4-hour visit from a plumber and 685 dollars later, I have a brand new, fully-functional spout and knob. The water pressure is great! Plus, I still get to do some diy work because I now have to replace the giant square of drywall and 2-by-4s that had to be removed to get to the pipes I broke.

So that's how we do Valentine's Day in my house: wet and inappropriate.

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After the last two weeks of plumbing disasters, I think I'm going to have to swear off bathroom repairs once and for all.

Last week: I took it upon myself (with no small amount of prompting from my mother) to fix the slow drip in my brother's guest bathroom. Despite all of my might, the stupid Moen Posi-Temp 1222 cartridge embedded in the tub faucet would not budge. Not with the official Moen replacement tool, not with a wrench, not with a hammer. I know when I'm out-matched: rather than risk breaking the pipes permanently, I called a plumber.

At least it wasn't just me. When the plumber arrived -- at 4:45PM the same day, a Friday! -- he admitted that it was the most stubborn sink cartridge he'd seen in at least 15 years. I'm sure he said that to soothe my ego, and it worked. It turned out that some knucklehead had overheated the pipe when soldering with the cartridge already in place, causing the rubber gaskets to fuse to the pipe walls. I'm certain that Moen doesn't cover "installer stupidity" in their Lifetime Guarantee.

[For the record, wriphe.com 100% endorses Tom Donnelly Plumbing. If you're in Dublin and your tub has started floodin', call Tom Donnelly.]

Yesterday: while trying to make my father's bathroom more handicapable following his foot surgery, I tightened the tank bolts and replaced the wax ring below his leaky toilet. Trying to maneuver the toilet back into place in the cramped space, I managed to spill toilet trap water all over my shoes and the floor. Of course, I promptly slipped -- Jerry Lewis would have been so proud -- dropping the toilet and breaking the base of the intake valve. This necessitated a third trip to Home Depot on the day to buy a replacement valve, a trip during which my car window motor broke in the down position. Grrr.

Finally, at 10PM, I got the toilet into place and turned the water back on, only to discover that the new intake valve stem and the existing water line don't play well together. So in the end, I replaced a leak at the base of the toilet with a leak at the tank. Truly a worthwhile endeavor.

[For the record, wriphe.com is 100% opposed to Oldsmobiles. If your car's AC is running hot and its electrical system's not, you're driving an Oldsmobile.]

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