Plumb This!

Yes, we had a second visit from my favorite local plumbers. I won’t soon forget our first plumbing adventure (read about it here if you have let it slip your mind).

Two Mondays ago, the Hubster woke me up with a plumbing issue for the second time in as many months. This time it was “Hey, just so you know, the tap for the hot water in the shower is just spinning. It isn’t actually turning on the water.”

Great.

So I poked around a little bit, then called SuperNeighbor for help, since I was pretty sure I could fix this bugger myself.

SuperNeighbor came over and said “OK. The first thing we need to do is turn off the water main for the house.

I was pretty certain that it was in the garage (I was right). We went down to the garage and it was pretty obvious that the heavily electrical-taped spigot just to the left of the water meter was the main water shutoff for the house. See?

Electrical tape is our friend!

I cranked that thing shut. It’s not the easiest thing in the world, since as you close the tap, it snugs up to the big ‘ol pipe (gas? I don’t know!) behind it.

But I cranked it shut. As tight as it would go. SuperNeighbor turned on the tap in the slop sink in the laundry room. Still plenty of water. Yeah, the water pressure was lower, but it would have run at a perfectly good volume for quite a while.

Houston, we have a problem. Again.

Fortunately, we do have a THIRD full bathroom in the house. Months ago, I got some ConTact paper “privacy screen” stuff at the hardware store. Since the window in the third full bath faces the front of the house, it’s kind of important to have some sort of covering on that window if you’re gonna shower in there.

Rotary cutters to the rescue!

It was super easy to cut the paper down to size with my quilting tools. A perfect cut every time! :-) I did forget to take a photo of our super-stylish etched glass swan on the shower door. The minute my parents bought this house, my mother swore she'd get rid of the swan. She hates the swan. 37 years later? Still a swan on the shower door in the first-floor bathroom! ;-)

So I called the plumber. Again. They came and did their thing. Again.

See? Shiny new lever-style water main shutoff! Bonus!

Lookin' good, Billy Ray! Feelin' good, Louis!

The plumber said that the old valve was just … gone. Not even a washer inside there. Nothing left at all.

So that means that we would have had to have a plumber come out and do that bit of work regardless. You can’t exactly renovate an entire bathroom without having a way to shut off the water to the house, right?

Speaking of which, we have met with two contractors about doing the work we want done on our master suite. It’s a completely interior job, which means it’s perfect for winter. Here’s hoping we can get moving on it soon!

I’ve started the work on the final M&Ms quilt and have promised myself that I’m quitting work at 5 sharp on Tuesday and heading into the dungeon to sew. May as well take advantage of the Hubster being out of town!

Fiber-ey content to resume soon. I hope!