Presence

The pipes were really calling today, at least in our house. Our kitchen sink had been leaking for a few months, and finally got bad enough (i.e. - the water was now dripping out onto the floor, rather than pooling up in the bottom of the cabinet) that it needed taking care of. In these situations, I apply Greg's First Rule of Home Improvement:

First rule of Home Improvement (also known as the "What the Hay" Rule): "Try it yourself first; it's already broken, so the worst you can do is not fix it; then you call the pros."

Unfortuneately, I often forget about the corollary to the First Rule:

Corollary to the First Rule (also known as the "Out of the Frying Pan, into the Fire" Corollary): It is possible, and likely, that when applying the First Rule, you will screw things up so badly that the damage will be worse than when you started.

I had tried to fix the leaky trap a few months ago (following the First Rule); I over-tightened the jam nut, cracking it, which, naturally, made things worse.

So yesterday I went to the Home Depot (Park Heights - the worst-run Home Depot in North America) and purchased a replacement jam nut. It didn't quite fit right, so I went back and got a rubber-pipe-joiner-thing (the technical name escapes me at the moment). The first one was too small (1-1/2" to 1-1/2"), so I exchanged it for a larger one (2" to 1-1/2"). This one was the perfect size, the smaller end fitting snuggly over the drain pipe, and the larger end covering the trap perfectly. Only one problem - the rubber joint was too long, so I couldn't reassemble the pieces.

And then, in a moment of inspiration that I can only call divine, I ran upstairs, grabbed my coping saw (left over from The Crown Moulding Experiment), and cut off about a half-inch of the rubber, and, viola!, it worked! All the bits and pieces were back in their places, and no water leakage. I was quite pleased, as I'm sure you can imagine. I really hadn't expected it to work.

And so, life in the kitchen has been returned to normal. The moral of the story is that you should always try, because without trying, you never fail and have to pay a plumber $800 to get a pummice stone out of your drain line. Which still confuses me, because we never owned a pummice stone...