Day 2348

You can never ignore Murphy's Law when you hire a plumber. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Somehow plumbing problems always end up being more difficult than they first appear. I was well prepared today. I had all the parts necessary to rebuild the leaking bathroom faucets. The only original part I had planned to reuse was a brass valve under the sink that the plumbing supply guys said was indestructible. Unfortunately, the sixty year old parts were so corroded that they were frozen solid and virtually impossible to remove from the porcelain body of the sink. While trying to remove the old faucets, the plumber broke the indestructible valve under the sink and we had to start over from the beginning. I took all the parts I bought yesterday back to the plumbing supply store and purchased a brand new faucet set that I hoped would fix.

I thought everything would be a piece of cake at this point, but the old brass water spout in the center of the sink was even more frozen and corroded than the faucets. I cut my hand trying to help the plumber remove the spout. The plumber, who was underneath the sink, cut his hand even worse. He also ended up having a small porcelain chip fall in his eye. We ended up having to saw the heavy brass spout off using a special metal saw. The important thing at this point was to not break the porcelain, because the plumber said the old basin would be impossible to replace. Eventually, the plumber realized that the sink had the upper hand and called a second plumber to come help him.  The two plumbers spent the rest of the day wrestling with the sink and eventually prevailed. I now have a very nice, and quite expensive, working sink.

Not surprisingly, Dot didn't like all this activity and ended up pooping fives time in the house. Trust me on this. Cleaning up after in incontinent dog is much more difficult when there is no running water in the house. We had to shut off the water to the entire house for most of the day, because the old sink had no shut off valves. By the end of the day I had a huge pile of smelly dog blankets and rugs sitting out in a pile on the back porch, waiting for the water to return so I could hose them off before throwing them in the washing machine.

This was a very expensive day. Before meeting the plumber, I dropped my car off at the Land Rover dealer for a required major service. There is a suspension problem that should be covered under the car's warranty, but the service maintenance is always on my dime. I love my car, except for those days when I have to pay for a major repair. The plumbing and car repair bills were enough for one day, but when I got home the was a call from the guy at the audio repair shop with an estimate of what it would cost to rebuild the second old tape recorder I'd taken to them. Yep. This recorder is going to cost just as much as the one I took in last month. All in all, not a good day. I really need to find a well paying job again. Maybe I should become a plumber.

Oh, did I mention that it rained today too and that the Internet has been down for most of the day. I had thought about putting the dogs beds out on the porch while the plumbers were working, but they are both scared of thunder and wanted nothing to do with going outside. All is well that ends well I guess. I now have a sink that will outlast me and hopefully nothing else in the house will break for a few months. Dot has finally calmed down and is resting peacefully. All I need to do now is figure out a way to upload this post without a working WiFi connection.

Holly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day