Weekend Plumbing

Weekend Plumbing

The kids on our Grace Lake fishing adventure – during which we caught absolutely nothing. But hey, it was still great just being outdoors with my kids on the last Friday evening of August.

By Allan Olson

I did not spend the last weekend of August geocaching or fishing. Either would’ve been more enjoyable than the task I faced on Sunday.

The kids and I did take the boat out on Friday evening, this time venturing further from home to try out Grace Lake, which I was informed was a great little lake to catch a ton of panfish. We tried several different spots over the course of two hours, fishing along the north shore of the lake, both drifting and anchored, but the only thing we managed to catch was weeds. It was nice to be out on the lake with the kids, but not as much fun as it could have been if we had caught a few fish. I had really hoped to get back out on a lake closer to home on Saturday or Sunday, but neither the time nor weather presented an opportunity.

On Saturday morning I headed into Cass Lake for the big football scrimmage. The Panthers were hosting seven other teams, all looking to get some work in against other teams before the first game of the regular season. Back home that afternoon, I really needed a nap. The allergy meds I had taken early in the morning worked well, but they really made me tired. I woke up a few hours later and had thoughts of going fishing, but the weather said “not happening,” and I wasn’t really feeling that motivated anyway. I didn’t really do anything the remainder of the day, making it a very unproductive Saturday on the home front for the last weekend of August.

If Saturday was unproductive, Sunday was quite the opposite.

My wife and I made waffles for the family breakfast, and I discovered that our “other” kitchen sink had a leak. For reasons too complicated to explain in this space, we have two sinks upstairs in our home. We have talked off and on for a while about fixing this problem, which included moving the dishwasher and some other “minor” plumbing stuff. Unfortunately, I do plumbing repairs about as well as car repairs (to be honest, I think I could fix more car stuff than plumbing, and that’s not saying much). Thankfully, my wife is much smarter than me, and combining help from the internet (YOU TUBE is great for this) with our limited knowledge, we dove in to the process. We headed into town to get some supplies to fix the leaky sink and reduce our two sinks to one on Sunday afternoon. We had food thawing out for supper, and figured after a couple hours of plumbing we would be able to eat and enjoy the rest of the evening.

We started disassembling the plumbing under the two different sinks, but ran into a couple snags. With a little internet help and some patience, we were able to fix that problem. We set the old/new sink in place of another sink, briefly discussed installing new laminate on a counter that we have had for some time, but decided to skip it for now, and then started re-assembling all the plumbing and the reverse-osmosis filter in the other sink.

The re-assembling process involved a variety of PVC pipe scattered all over the floor, consisting of new and old parts and some that probably should have been thrown in the garbage years ago, after the last plumbing party when we moved in.

Everything seemed to be going pretty well. My wife was able to get everything assembled (and then re-assembled again because we forgot to put the plumbers tape on the stuff) and all back together. We were able to get the dishwasher in the new spot, the lines hooked up and finally turned the water back on under the sink. And then we discovered more leaks. Ultimately we decided to change the main water fitting coming into the sink from the wall and eliminate one adapter. In the end, that one extra turn to tighten the fitting ended up in a snap – the water line was broke. Now we were in big trouble – we had no water in the house, and all the stores were closed. We dug through our box of plumbing supplies, but I knew it was a futile task before we started. I didn’t have any spare parts of that size.

We sat for a bit and thought. I checked with a neighbor – no answer. Another neighbor said maybe, but no joy. I checked with my brother; nope. He had nothing either. I checked with the first neighbor again, and this time they were home. He told me he was pretty sure he had the parts I needed. It was all I could do to hold my excitement in check, and sure enough – he did! I brought the parts home and we went back to work. We broke another part, but since we had the extra parts from the neighbor, we were able to get it fixed and our water restored. Whew! Most importantly, after crawling underneath two sinks all day, a shower was going to happen and I wouldn’t need to be at the door of the big box plumbing store at 6 a.m. on Monday.

My wife and I were excited that we were able to get this home repair project completed, and this moves us one step closer to some other projects that we want to get done. As for the sink, one of the pipes still has a minor leak, but that will be remedied before the week is out. As for future plumbing projects, I think we will start them much earlier in the day (just in case we break something else).

Enjoy your summer, and be sure to snap a photo or two to preserve a lifetime of memories. Thanks for reading, and have a great week! Feel free to drop me a line at cltimes1@arvig.net or stop by the office for a visit. To our law enforcement officers and other emergency personnel, be safe, and thank you for all that you do!