Cody’s blog

Well, it took me two weekends, but I finally fixed the sinks in the bathroom and the kitchen. All in all, I replaced the faucets, the pipes, and installed shut-off valves, using reducing bushings with homemade washers to connect all the standard 1/2″ piping to the weird 3/8″ iron pipes coming in from the floor. I made at least six trips to the hardware store, and climbed the hill behind my house many times to shut the water off and on, chasing down leaks and finally discovering that neither teflon tape or paste was enough to seal the connection between the iron pipe and the bushings, hence the washers.

Anyway, I now have shiny new faucets and shut-off valves and no leaks or drippy faucets anywhere! Go me! I ended up spending about $170 on parts, plus many hours and bruises, but I’m very pleased with myself that I managed to do it all on my own.

And now, I seem to have gotten myself all energized to work on home improvement projects on my days off. I’m considering what to tackle next. (Besides housecleaning, of course. I still need to do the bedroom and back room, and then start again at the beginning.) I still have the stopper to install in the bathroom sink, and the toilet needs a new thingy in the tank. I want to put moldings around the floor in the utility room, in hopes of keeping the mice out of there, and if I’m going to do the utility room, I might as well get enough to put in the kitties’ room as well. I need to replace the broken shelf in the kitties’ enclosure, and I also want to take the kitty cage out of there, and instead put a nice big shelf outside the window, with posts to climb down. And I want to start working on screening in the porch.

Plus, I think my water tank is leaking, so I need to start calling around to see about getting it replaced. And, before the weather turns cold, I need to replace the insulation on the pipes from the water tank and from the pump that I’ve been working on.

I’m never short of projects to work on, I just need to decide which one to start on next!

Friday started out a really good day. I got up and did two loads of laundry, cleaned and vacuumed the sun room and the front room. Then I took a break to go to town with my mom, pick up the mail and a few groceries and have lunch.

When I got home, I found a puddle of water on the bathroom floor in front of the sink. Hm. Opened the cabinet and found the shelf swimming in about a half-inch of water. Eek! There was water steadily dripping down the hot water pipe. I’ve known there’s a slight leak under the sink somewhere, but couldn’t figure out exactly where it was coming from. Now, it’s a slight leak no more.

I ran up the hill to turn the water off—and Yay! I at least have a shut-off valve to the house now. It would have been extra disastrous if I couldn’t shut off the water and had to, I don’t know, open all the faucets in the house to try to drain the tank so it wouldn’t all drip out on the bathroom floor. Turns out the tank was near empty anyway, but still.

Then I tried to get the pipe unscrewed, but it was stuck tight to the faucet. I have some plumber’s putty but I was hesitant to use it. If it worked, fine, but if it didn’t, I’d have an even harder time getting the pipe out. Decided to risk it, and gopped putty all around the pipe where it connects to the faucet. Waited about half an hour, turned the water back on—no good. It was leaking worse than ever. By this time, it was getting dark, so I shut the water back off, went next door to Mom’s to take a shower and fill one of my 3-gallon water jugs, and gave it up for the night.

Saturday, I had an eight-mile run to do, plus work in the afternoon. I figured maybe the putty would stick better after the pipe had dried overnight, so I put some more on in the morning, went out to do my run, then turned the water on when I got home. It was still leaking, but not as bad, so I put sponges around the pipe to catch the leaks and left the water on long enough to shower, wash out my bandages, do dishes, and refill all the water jugs. Then I turned it back off when I went to work.

After work, it occurred to me that if I could at least get the pipe unscrewed from the inlet pipe at the bottom of the cabinet, I could maybe get a valve from Home Depot to screw onto the inlet pipe to stop the water coming to the sink, so I could at least turn the water back on to the rest of the house. Trouble was, Home Depot only had 1/2″ inlet valves. I was sure the pipe was smaller than that, but I bought one anyway just in case. Sure enough, it was too big. So I was without water for another night.

Sunday, I went to Mountain Spirit Center, then stopped at the True Value hardware store afterwards and talked to the guy about my problem. Seems the 3/8″ pipe I have is nonstandard (no surprise there, it’s part of the original trailer; lots of things are weird sizes) and there’s no valve to fit a 3/8″ male fitting. We talked a bit about what to do, but I finally just bought a 3/8″ cap so I could at least cap it off for the time being and turn the water on. Which is what I did. Yay! Running water!

I also managed to get all the putty off the pipe, using a screwdriver and hammer as a scraper, and finally got the pipe unscrewed from the faucet. Whew!

So today, the plan is to shut the water off again, go to the hardware store and get all the faucet fittings, valves, and replacement pipes I’ll need, then fix the leaky faucets and install shut-off valves on  the pipes in the kitchen and bathroom sinks, as well as replacing the pipes in the bathroom. I’ve studied all the bits and think I can now get everything taken apart and put together properly. If all goes well, by the end of the day, I’ll have everything fixed! And then I can stop thinking about plumbing for a while.

Have solved one health matter: stopped taking the Zyrtec, and my constant tiredness and grogginess went away. Fortunately, my allergies haven’t gotten any worse. In fact, my nose seems less dry and bloody. So yay! Also, I strung scare tape along the side of the house and the woodpeckers have stopped waking me up every morning drumming on the house. My mom says it looks like I’m decorating for Christmas! Heh. It is kind of silly-looking, but I don’t care, I’m just glad the woodpeckers are afraid of the flashing silver stuff and stay away from the side of the house.

Meanwhile, another health matter has arisen. My stomach’s been wonky since Monday afternoon. I suspect it’s a delayed reaction to the antibiotics I was on. It hasn’t been really bad, just some slight aches and mild diarrhea, but it’s been dragging on for days now. Yesterday morning, I was researching antibiotic-related colitis online, trying to decide if I should call the doctor or not (concluded that as long as I don’t have a fever or severe pain, I’m probably ok), and found that some recommend eating yogurt to help re-establish normal intestinal balance. I should get some yogurt, I said to myself, then suddenly remembered the quart of plain yogurt I bought ages ago and sort of forgot about. Thinking that it had certainly gone bad by now, I opened it up, and it was still good! So I’ve been eating that. I think it’s helping; at least, I’m feeling somewhat better, although I’m still not back to normal.

It sure is good to feel awake again, though. Work and running and everything feels better. Now, I just need to get my digestion working again.