Saturday, December 14, 2013

My Plumber's Helper

The Christmas Parade has been canceled because of rain.  That means CP doesn't have to play her fiddle on the Feed and Seed float and I don't have to keep the coffee coming for the public.

Which is great because our kitchen sink started leaking and jobs like this are always easier when it's cold and rainy.  I knew how to replace the drain, but I went to You-Tube just to see how easy it will be. Anyway, I had a half gallon of Plumbers Putty left over from installing the faucet and I thought all I needed was the special wrench.  I went to Lowes and got the spanner for ten bucks.  I noticed the wrench had a cutout to insert a socket wrench.  It came to me that I could actually use it in its plastic package and then return it.  Unfortunately, removing the old drain wasn't at all like the You-Tube video.  First, I told CP I needed her for a minute to keep the drain from spinning while I removed the locking ring without removing the wrench from the package.  I showed CP how to insert the plier handle into the drain and place the hammer handle through the slot for leverage.  That's when we went off the You-Tube script.

Around here we measure DIY projects on the "Your Sister's @#%" scale.  CP estimates how many times I will mumble "Your Sister's @#%" before we are done.  I thought this job wouldn't even rise to that occasion.  It seems that ten years of crud had sort of welded the locking ring to the drain. I tried WD-40, then I gave up on that and used a hammer and punch on the ring and got it to budge about a half inch. All this time CP is up top with the pliers and a stick trying to hold the drain from turning. At one point I think her feet were coming off the floor.  That's when I heard her mumble "Your Sister's @#%."  That's when I knew I was finally rubbing off on her.

I told CP I needed a torch to heat up the ring. Since I'm now living the dream of condo life I no longer have my propane torch. However, I did have Marianne's creme brulee butane torch she left here ten years ago.  After about thirty seconds of torch the ring broke free.  After all this I just couldn't put that corroded drain back in, so I went back to Lowes and bought a new one. 

Without You-Tube who knows how many "YSA's" it would have taken.  After thirty-two years CP has learned how to use my stress relieving mantras.


4 comments:

Aunt Mary said...

LOL.

With Tom home for a couple of weeks, I've deemed the holidays as "time to paint the bathroom and change out the floor. I don't even want to think the adages those two will use when they start work on that linoleum.

Anonymous said...

Babba... your quotes are a little more flavored than my comments. Mary hates it when I call the stubborn item "You Rotter!" or "Piece of JUNK!"
Now she wants me to redo the bathroom linoleum. I hate undoing something I've installed years back. I generally put them in to stay.... .

Babba-Gi said...

I was wondering whether if this phrase was just a local Bronx expression. I did find a definition: a thing you shout during an intense game of bocce to pysch out the other team. My friends never played bocce, but they did snap off a lot bolts on intake manifolds.

Marianne said...

Hey! I didn't "leave" my creme brulee torch at your house! You guys wouldn't let me take it to Indiana because, "You'll probably burn your house down."

Can I have it now that I have a husband?