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In case you haven’t been able to tell yet, I do not like plumbing. It’s one of my least favorite things to do. It seems though that with my size it should be something that I am good at. I can make myself very small when I need to.

Over the last 2 years I have tackled the under kitchen sink plumbing (my nemesis) several times. A year ago thanksgiving my main line gray water pipe decided to break at 5pm the night before thanksgiving. That resulted in replacing the entire 45 foot main line of lead and cast iron drain pipe with PVC after a very interesting thanksgiving.

Well a few weeks ago my best friend’s widow called me and said her cold water in the shower was leaking. A friend of mine and i went over and put a temporary patch on it until she could go out and get a new shower faucet. Thursday night she called me at 9:30pm and said Cameron (her son) had accidentally broken our patch and asked if i could come over and put it back together. When I got there i knew it would mean a replacement. With Lowe’s closed for the night I knew the chance of a repairs were even slimmer. There was no more patching it this time the threads had finally given way and a weekend afternoon of plumbing was going to be in my future.

Today my friend and I went to Lowe’s and found a Moen faucet on clearance and were able to get it all put in and back together in time for Cameron’s birthday party this afternoon. It only required 3 trips to Lowe’s for parts and tools from my house. The demolition of a closet wall was fun though and we did manage to get it all back back together so she can get all of her stuff back in there. Cam, Rhessa, and shell I hope the shower is good tonight, no more going to the neghbors.

Happy Birthday Cam!

It’s been almost a week and so far so good on the kitchen, no more leaking fittings. Let’s see how long it will take for the next encounter with my friend the Kitchen.

We bought our house in the Fall of 2004 and we completely gutted the kitchen.In this process we added new flooring, appliances, windows, and moved some cabinets around. We also installed a new countertop and resurfaced the original sink. about 6 weeks later we discovered that the water connection for the refrigerator had not been tightened more then finger tight and was dripping water under the dishwasher. this caused the pine floor underneath the new lamanent to warp. We pulled up the entire new swiftlock cherry floor had to plane the pine floor and then had to install the swiftlock floor again. That was fun let me tell ya.

So now 2 years later I was curious about the recent loss in water pressure in the kitchen faucet so while I was looking for clues I found that the Hot water shutoff valve was not fully open. So what did I do being the genius that I am I opened it fully and thought nothing more of it. I did find that the faucet screen was clogged with some rust deposits from our cast iron pipes. Problem solved, not really problem created.

Well after a full day of having the hot water shutoff valve open it was leaking under the sink and once again under my Swiftlock flooring. Lucky for me I found it after a day instead of weeks like last time. Thanks to my trusty helper Emmett and the need to be on the floor with him.

So we quickly shut off the valve and started the prep work for taking the floor up again this make a total of 3 installations of this floor and it has held up pretty well. We removed the dishwasher and the fridge went back into the living room.

The valve was fixed and then instead of waiting for the floor to dry I used a paint stripping heat gun and saved myself 3 days of waiting and agony of no water in the kitchen. The flooring was back down 24 hours after being removed. the good thing this time was we only had to remove 3 feet of the flooring and the trim instead of the entire floor like last time.

Moral of the story: If something is not as you expect it there is probably a reason for it and if you change it go back and check on it later as there may be a new problem.