The Unexpected Project

Husband, Ozzie (our 540 square foot bungalow), and I shared one utterly blissful week together after we moved in. The laurel hedges were gone, Husband put up shelves and cabinets for storage, and we slowly unpacked all our boxes. I was in love with home ownership.

Then, the unthinkable happened…

It was a normal day in the Williams household. With our dishes finally unpacked and the kitchen in somewhat of a working order, I decided it was finally time to cook our first meal in the new kitchen. I was thrilled to finally have a kitchen with normal size appliances and adequate countertop space (if you can imagine, our last place was even smaller than Ozzie). Dinner went off without a hitch and I was feeling pretty good about Ozzies’s cooking capabilities.

That was until I went to clean up.

As I began washing the dishes, I noticed the sink was not draining properly. In fact, the sink was not draining at all. The more times I turned on the faucet, the higher the water filled in the sink.

The culprit

I figured it was just a fluke. As such I decided to just leave the sink alone for a bit to see if the water disappeared. When I checked on it again, the water had drained completely and all seemed to be in working order.

I didn’t think much of it until I did the dishes again the next day. At first everything worked properly, then two or three dishes in, the sink began to fill with water. This time I knew something was amiss.

I causally mentioned the problem to Husband, but since he had a lot of work to do at that moment, I decided I would take matters into my own hands. Due to a peach and garbage disposal incident in college, I learned that the best way to investigate our lack of proper drainage was to undue the p-trap under the sink. I drove to the storage unit where we kept all of Husbands tools and snagged the plumbing wrench.

Once back home and under the sink, I undid the pipes only to find a bit of gunk and water in the pipes. Nothing that would cause such an immense backup. Nonetheless, under Husbands advice, I cleaned out the pipes as best as possible and reassembled the sink.

Anticipating the big moment, I held my breath and turned the water on….

No dice. Something was still amiss with my beloved new (to me) sink. After several trips to the hardware store and more failed attempts at dealing with the clog, I had no choice but to turn to Husband for help. He decided it was time to crawl under the house to investigate.

His plan of action you might ask? Well, it seemed the only solution left was to cut into the pipes and replace the entire line to the main sewer pipe. Not the most ideal situation seeing as we were planning on moving and replacing the drainage pipes in the very near future.

Nonetheless,while I was at work Husband got to the bottom of our drainage problem. Here is what he found…

Rusted out pipes

The cut pipes Husband had to replace

Yes, that is correct…. our pipes had rusted out so badly that not even water could drain from our sink anymore. Sigh.

At least now the sink is in proper working order. That is, of course, until we rip out the entire kitchen to make room for our new and improved kitchen in the future.