Merciless Street

Please welcome our guest blogger again, Greg!

This week was my spring break, so I was fortunate to have a lot of time to work at the house. Many others came and went (Nicole, Dad, Mom, Dave, Roger) but I do believe I was the only person there for six long days straight.  

Anyhow, Roger came a couple of times to take care of some of the jobs that required 1. Someone who knows what he/she is doing and 2. two sets of hands, e.g. securing the loose microwave, tracing electrical, hanging fixtures, etc.  When he slid back one of the drop ceiling tiles in the kitchen to see what maze of wires awaited him to sort out, he noticed a problem.  As any good plumber will tell you: 1) don't bite your fingernails and 2) shit should flow downhill.  Well, "the homeowner," as Roger calls him, or one of his buddies, had installed relatively new pipe when they installed the shower but the pipe was going uphill, causing our tub to not drain properly (a problem we had noticed but not gotten to).  Note the picture of the brown stained shirt that leads off this post.  That is the result of me holding the bucket while Roger sawed open the pipes.  The first cut caused brown smelly water to spray the entire kitchen including us, the second cut was a more greenish hue, which we were relieved to realize was just the lime green living room paint which had been sitting in the pipe.  After a lot of laughs, a change of shirt (thanks Dad), and an hour or so at Home Depot trying to figure out how to put together a new piping puzzle, we will now be able to sleep easy knowing that our soapy shower water and dead skin cells will leave the premises rather than hover above us while we cook our Sunday gravy.  [Editor's note: Sunday gravy is marinara sauce for you non-Italians.]  

There were other snags, such as an electrical fiasco that has yet to be resolved that I could never explain to you even in person, much less in this short space.  The short version is that after all of the plumbing issues, Roger installed one light fixture and said, "When I turn this breaker on either we can pack up and leave or there will be fireworks."  When he flipped the switch the power in the whole house went out, and we stayed 3 more hours trying unsuccessfully to sort out the shoddy craftsmanship.  

There was a time when I thought my spring break would be move in.  I would appreciate it if our street started living up to its name.