A Good, Old Fashioned Disaster

See, when things go wrong, it is you housebloggers that I think about. A couple weeks back, we had a nasty cold snap. It was below 25 degrees for about a week here in Arkansas. My renter was good and left the faucets dripping, but when it's that cold and the house doesn't have real insulation, it just isn't enough sometimes. Oh, and the renter wasn't home when this happened.

They discovered it when the neighbors called because they were concerned about the lake in the yard.


Note, the builders of this gem of a house decked the floors with chip-board. On the upside, this probably saved the whole house from flooding. Once the floors in the bedrooms were ruined, the water drained straight through it and into the crawlspace.

Some of the tear out heaped in the carport.



Condensation on the ceiling from all that lovely moisture.

Oh, and did I mention that our insurance doesn't cover this kind of damage. Driving rain? Fire? Tornado? Yes. Burst pipe in the bathroom? No.

So, this is all out of pocket (and being documented for a monster tax write-off next year). So far, all new plumbing, new bathtub, new sub-floors (approximately 400-500 square feet), new carpet, new vinyl, new drywall, three new doors, and . . . counting.

On the upside, this should all be finished next week because I hired the whole bleeding mess out. See! I learned something!

But plumbing is still the Devil.

The Beast Lives Forever More

Well, after only four years, we have a fully functional plumbing system, or so I thought.

We'd been having trouble with our clawfoot tub drain. It really wasn't too big of a problem if you didn't use the tub. Since we now have two working sinks in the master bathroom, we no longer had to wash our hands in the tub, so this wasn't a problem for me. However, my wife has this obscene fetish for soaking in a hot bath with gobs of girly, good smelling herbs and oils. While our jet-tub is fully operational, something about pumping a milk bath with essential oils through the self-heating jet system just didn't sound like a good idea.

So, she demanded that the clawfoot tub be fixed. Otherwise, she proposed tearing the whole master bathroom off the house since it "never seemed to fucking work." I am not kidding. And, I think that she was serious.

Fearful, I called Russ at All Plumbing and asked him to come back to house and fix the drain. He said he'd be out in a couple weekends at 9 AM. He never showed. I called and left a message. He called back and left a message. And, so it went. Normally, I wouldn't have put that much effort into it, but he'd done such a professional job on two previous occasions that I figured missing the appointment was a fluke. Finally, Scarlet talked to him, and he came out and fixed the drain. And, he didn't charge us since "you already paid me to fix it once, so it ought to have been fixed." Great! There was much rejoicing and a hecatomb was sacrificed to the plumbing devil.

Scarlet goes to take her long anticipated soak after a truly suck-ass week at work. She complained that the water wasn't hot enough, and, after a empirical test to prove to me that the hot water heater at the rear of the house made hotter water than the master bathroom system, I went under the house and turned up the thermostat on the offending heater. And, defying all expectations, the water actually got colder. It went from sort of hot to lukewarm. No, I didn't accidentally turn the thermostat down either. I checked.

So, what's the problem? I do not know. I think the heater may need a higher amp breaker. My dad also suggested that due to the length of the run from the breaker box to the heater that we may need to replace the line with a higher gauge wire. Scarlet thinks it might be a bum water heater.

Any suggestions from you clever DIY types? If you have some, let me know.

Plumbing is the Devil.

You Know You Want It

Here is most of what I've got. Make me an offer. I've suggested some prices, but mostly I want it gone.

Item 1) 10 "strong tie" metal tie ins for hanging joists. The inside "cup" is roughly 1 5/8 " wide and 3 3/16" deep. All 10 for $5.00.


Item 2) one 1 1/2" pvc "T." $1.00.

Item 3) Four 3/4" to 3/4" to 1/2 " T's. Two 1/2" T's. One 1/2" female treaded coupling/adaptor; one 1/2" coupling, one 3/4" (treaded) to 1" coupling; and one 1/2" to 1/2" female threaded adaptor/coupling. All PVC. $5.00.

Item 4) Two CPVC 3/4" to 3/4" cut-off valves, rated for 150 PSI. $7.00.

Item 5) Misc brass L coupling, 3/4" (threaded) to 1/2" (?).

Item 6) One Craftsman portable table saw guide (roughly 14" x 5 1/4" x 4 3/4"). The silver portion which fits in the saw's groove is 5/8" wide. $5.00.

Item 7) Eight 3/4" PVC couplings.

Item 8) CPVC Mixed Lot: 18 1/2" T's; one 1/2" cap; four 1/2" L's; five 1/2" treaded couplings (used to attach to sink cut-off valves, etc). $5.00.

Let me know what you want at thedevilqueen(AT)hotmail(DOT)com, and I can figure out the shipping. Paypal or checks are good. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Decrapification Equals $73.45

That's right boys and girls! Once the cleaning starts, the money pours in by the fistful!

Last night I went to Lowe's and returned three sacks full of unused, unloved, and unwanted plumbing supplies. And, having learned from our encounter with Ms. I-flushed-my-brain, Lowe's resident demon of the return desk, I took the unusual precaution of washing all of my returns. That is right, I washed them.

Filling the kitchen sink with hot water and gently washing all the dust and dirt off thirty or forty PVC and CPVC fittings is an odd experience. You have to be extra careful to not get the stick-on price tags too wet so they don't fall off or bleed, but I did it. Then, they were all carefully dried and bagged.

I didn't have any trouble with my returns. They wouldn't take two items because they weren't from Lowe's (fair enough, right?), but I'm okay with that since they gave me $73.45 for everything else.

I can't wait to see what else I can find to return.

The Best Home Improvement Project Ever

Before the fever set in two weekends ago, I had what I imagined to be a very clever post regarding our first Saturday with the plumber. Something along the lines of how great it was having an ass load of plumbing completed while your family sits around the table in their pajamas eating breakfast. And, it is a great experience that everyone should try at least once because life is too short to spend all your spare time plumbing.

Russ, our plumber, and his assistant were very quick. All of the first Saturday's scheduled work was completed in roughly three and a half hours. When we commented on how impressed we were with his speed, Russ replied, "It was easy since you used CPVC. All I had to do was cut out the old stuff [Titan heaters] and hook-up the new ones. I didn't have to re-plumb anything else." That was a feel-good. Aside from bungling-up a few things, maybe we really hadn't done too bad of a job as plumbing novices?

Also, for those of you might not know, CPVC is the plastic pipe that you ought to use for all of your hot water lines. If you don't and us PVC, your pipes will become brittle, crack, and flood your house. Then you'll have to hang yourself because it is much easier to do that than fix that much home-improvement sorrow.

The most impressive thing about Russ and company aside from their speed was that after they left everything seemed to work. And, a week and a half later, it still does.

So, last weekend we had Russ back to finish off the Devil Queen's plumbing: the leaking claw foot tub drain (long story), the leaking master bath vanity drains (short story - I'm a weak monkey with only two arms), the bum hot water shut off valve in the hall bath (cheap ass Lowe's plumbing hardware), and the non-plumbed hot tub (we are just too demoralized to even try).

And, in a flash, the last of this woe passed. For only $190.00, the last plumbing punch-list went quietly.

The first time I tried the hot tub's plumbing I felt a little stupid. It turned the faucet on and just gaped when water began pouring into the tub. I don't know how long it was I stood there just looking. You'd think I'd just seen Lazarus raised from the dead.

So, last night I decide to tackle the last hot tub related task, connecting the electrical. Now, this might sound arduous, but all I had to do was open the access panel and plug in the hot tub's built-in heater and the pumps. I'll skip all the gory details and skip to the part where I fill the tub and hit the on button. It immediately started. Now, this is where an amateur DIY person might start rejoicing. You know, like I did after I installed the master bathroom vanities before I noticed the small, trickle of water leaking from the drain.

So, before I did my victory dance, I put the tub to the test. I jumped in and ran the thing non-stop for an hour. Someone had to do it, right? After an hour of such demanding work, I was weak in the knees. As I stumbled out of the tub, I couldn't help but think that this was the best home improvement project ever. Really.


Seriously, I'm really very, very glad the hot tub seems to work. We bought the damn thing so long ago that the warrantee expired before it was ever install much less connected to anything.

Too Smug for My Own Good

I guess I should have known better. Dismiss a leak because the plumber is coming? Guess what? No plumber. No call, no anything. Sign. I guess I know what I'll be doing once I get the floors prepped for sanding.

[Update: the plumber is allegedly coming Saturday morning. Will he make it?!]

Synchronicity

Plumbing is the Devil, but, for once, I have found a leak that I just don't care about at all. Really. Last night, I was cleaning out the master bedroom closet when I found this.

I thought, "Oh fuck."

I run my hand down the hot water line out of the heater. The copper to cpvc coupling is wet, the joint is leaking very, very slowly. "Well that looks like it's been there for a while (note dry watermarks on the floor to the right of the heater).

I wonder if this is where the water from our mystery drip was coming from last . . . August? Well, no point in turning it off I guess. I mean, I'll need to take a shower tomorrow morning (technically later this morning?). Besides, the plumber is going to be here tomorrow anyway. Perfect timing. How is that for some fucking luck for once? Screw this, I'm going to bed."

How is that for prescience? Didn't I say something about water heaters flooding the house yesterday? Now, the question is: will the plumber show?

Titan Revisited

A name is a creature of immense power.

In more modern times, we've become rather lax in our appreciation of names. Sure, parents agonize over their newborn child's name, but we don't attach the same seriousness to it. In many ancient cultures, knowledge of a person's, an animal's, or god's true name was believed to give one power over them. The ancient Jews believed the mere uttering of the name of God could unmake the world.

Perhaps folks in advertising and marketing best appreciate the power of names. On some level, everyone wants to believe that what they buy is super, fantastic, or extra-whitening. And, you can't help but wonder if the reason that the Chevy Citation was a suck-ass car was because it was called a citation. According to Webster's, being cited can mean, "to mention in an official report as meritorious," but, when I hear the word, I think of it in terms of its other meaning, "to summon before a court of law." No one wants to go to court. Bad things happen to good people in court all of the time. And, if a policeman gives you a citation, you can typically expect to pay a fine.

On the surface, titan is a pretty potent name. It implies a creature of great power and strength. Once, they were even gods.

So, if you were marketing an on-demand water heater, calling it Titan seems like a pretty good bet. What could be better than a water heater of immense power, right?

But, upon closer inspection, perhaps Titan isn't such an auspicious name. Take Cronus, self-made leader of the Titans, for instance. He was an abused child, he castrated his father (perhaps not without justification), and crowned that achievement by marrying his sister. As an abused child, it was almost statistically inevitable that would perpetuate the cycle of violence by becoming an abusive father. And, he was then castrated by one of his sons, a product of incest. Nice.

So, what does it mean when your on-demand water heater is a deposed, incestuous, blood-thirsty eunuch-god? It means that your testicles will shrivel like ice-wine grapes and fall from the vine because January is bad time to take cold shower. And, when I say cold, I mean a cold so intense that not showering is an acceptable alternative.

I haven't mention this before for several reasons, several shamelessly self-serving. In our old house, we complained about how little hot water our heater produced for years before I noticed that it was set on the lowest temperature setting. We had plenty of hot water once we turned the magic knob up to a higher temperature. Genius, right? And it only took us (me) 3 years to figure that one out. So, before I complained about our situation, I though it might be a good idea to make sure I hadn't over looked anything obvious.

Also, in the run up to our appraisal this summer, I didn't want to publicly post something calling the integrity of a major household-system into question. The chances that our appraiser would find our blog were pretty slim, but I have no desire to tempt the Fates. If he had found it, he would be professionally and legally obligated to disclose that in the appraisal. And we all know how much bankers love a failing household-systems.

When we originally bought the Titan water heaters, we did our research on them. They seemed like perfect fit at the time with a few caveats. Unlike a traditional water heater, the Titan requires that the water flowing into the heater be at no less than 50 degrees Fahrenheit. While I can not find a definitive source for the information, I have heard that the average soil temperature for my part of the world is roughly 57 degrees Fahrenheit. Given that Arkansas' official State Soil (yes, we have one), Stuttgart Soil, has an average temperature around 59 degrees, 57 degrees sounds about right considering we are further north and about 700 feet more above sea level.

Even with insulated pipes, I think our crawlspace may be the source of our problem. I know that slab construction is a fairly typical foundation for new construction. Maybe Titan assumes that this unit will be going into a home with a slab foundation? Perhaps entering directly from the ground and into the home with no basement or crawlspace in between insures the water stays above 50 degrees? Even if the water in the pipes comes into the crawl space at 50 degrees, it may loose just enough warmth to slip below that magical threshold?

Or, may be it is just the heater? We've using the highest setting on the heater, and we still end up with the shower faucet cranked all of the way over to hot. And it still doesn’t matter, the water is lukewarm at best.

Apparently, we are not the only folks who've had trouble achieving the elusive Nirvana of hot water. While they suggest that this configuration is for Northern States who have been historically been doomed to suffer cold water, I suspect that by "northern states" they mean to say any state north of Florida. Of course, the cultural and geographical implications of this are pretty staggering. Who knew a water heater could wreck the social fabric of our nation?

So, the Devil that you are, you may be thinking, "Okay, you have two Titan water heaters. Move one and piggy-back them like the diagram above. Problem solved." Well, not really. And don't think we haven't considered it either.

The problems are many fold. Basically, since the Devil Queen was built before in-door plumbing, it has a huge, sprawling water system. You could plumb two or three new-construction homes with the amount of pipe we've run in the Devil Queen. To conserve on pipe and since an individual Titan is meant to service only two bathrooms and a kitchen, the Devil Queen has two separate hot water systems. One services the master bathroom and the hall bathroom and the other the kitchen, a bathroom, and the laundry room.

Over the last nine months or so, we've toyed around with several possible solutions to our problem. There were two basic variations we narrowed it down to:

1) Buy two new Titan heaters and use them to piggy-back the two we already have.
2) Buy two small (10 to 20 gallon) point-of-source, "traditional" hot water heaters and install them in the crawlspace to pre-heat the water before it got to the Titans

We opted for #2. We bought two 18 gallon water heaters and called a plumber to install them because we're sick of plumbing and don't have the time to do it even if we did love plumbing.

Saturday morning the plumber came out to bid the job. His bid was reasonable, but there was one problem, power. The plumber looked at our breaker box and said, "There is no way I can make this work with your box. There just isn't enough power to run all these heaters. The best I can do is take out these [the Titans] and install two 30 or 40 gallon low-boys in the crawlspace."

What is so galling about our breaker box is that it was the largest one we could find at the time. That's right, 200 Amps is barely enough for our 100% electric house. Sigh.

So, last weekend, we took the two 18 gallon heaters back to Lowe's and traded them in for two 38 gallon low-boy heaters. Now we just have to set up a time for the plumber to come and install them. And, if we have any money left over, we're going to have him fix a few sinks too.

There is one good thing about this. By removing the Titans from the pantry and master bedroom closet and placing the new heaters in the crawlspace, we'll regain roughly 10 to 15 square feet of storage space. And, if the hot water heaters ever leak, it'll fill up the crawl space, not the Devil Queen and it's wood floors.

And, since the Titans work (even if they aren't adequate for the Devil Queen), we can put them in storage until we find a new home for them (don't think we haven't been considering this already).

If nothing else, it has definitely been a learning experience.

Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, or Less is More

If I were to attempt a concise summary, it might go something like this: "Refuse prevents the refinishing of the dining room floor," or, even better than that, "What is all of this shit?"

Really, what is it? Why have I gone to such great length to keep it with me until now only to toss it into the trash last night with a curse? After only three hours of intensive labor and soul searching, I have found my dining room floor. And, now that I've cleared the deck for action, I'm going to spend the weekend outside painting window sashes and hanging storm windows. Can you see why this whore of a house isn't finished?

We're supposed to have a full week of blue sky and sun, so I figure this may be my last chance to get the storm windows up. That way, when February rolls around, my frozen ass won't be handing over the better part of a paycheck to the electric company every month.

I've decided that less is definitely more. Owning a room full of thirty years of shit in cardboard boxes, stacked to the ceiling as though placed there by mischievous poltergeists, is bad mojo. Try it sometime if you don't believe me. I'll bet serious money that you will eventually find yourself raving alone in a dark, cold house saying shit like, "Why??? You have got be kidding me! Shit! Shit! Shit! What is all of this? Cthulhuflagen, Yog-Sothoth , goat with a thousand spawn flibrishermagagiagiiii!"

Not pretty, is it?

Anyhow, even if the floor isn't finished yet, we have been at work. First, we may have painting assistance lined up to work until the old whore house is finished. And, there is allegedly a plumber coming Saturday to make a bid on Plumbing Remediation 2.0.

Wish us luck. And, if Mars is in opposition and Saturn is crossing Orion (and no rain), maybe I'll even take some damn pictures of what we've been up to here at the Devil Queen. A novel idea, no?

The Happy Shub-Niggurath or The Hanged Man

As far as the Devil Queen is concerned, not much has happened. I did hook up the other sink in the master bathroom though. That drain leaks too but not as badly. And unless fighting a ongoing dual with what I suspect to be a monster wasps' nest counts as working on the house, the sink is the only "progress" I can claim. Really, it's pretty sad.

Fortunately, not doing anything on the Devil Queen has left me with just enough time to half-ass my sole contribution to the Cthulhu Mythos, the Happy Shub-Niggurath (technically is should be the Happy Young of Shub-Niggurath, The Black Goat with a Thousand Young, but bugger that).

Scarlet and I did some strategic planning last weekend too. We're trying to hire a good painter to salvage/finish the exterior paint job and a good plumber to do some remedial plumbing. We also need to have our gravel drive and parking area expanded in preparation for our covenants mandated car-storage. We're opting for a carport. And, we're going to need Kenny and Burt to come back for a couple of weeks to build the carport, do some trim work, and other finishing projects.

While this sounds like a nice plan, there is the ugly fact that we will need ass loads of money for all of this. Now, the industrious DIY'er that you are may be thinking, "Hell, you could save ass loads of money if you did it yourself, duh!" And, you'd be right. However, I have learned several important lessons about life slaving away on the Devil Queen. One of the lessons is this: you are allotted a finite amount of time in this world; it is up to you to determine how you'd like to spend it. After something like four years of indentured servitude to a house, I'd like to spend my time doing something else, and I am willing to pay for the pleasure.

Another lesson that I've learned is that Scarlet and I have a much happier marriage when we do not do plumbing together. Doing it by ourselves when the other one is home isn't much better. At this point, spending approximately five weekends under the Devil Queen plumbing together could be catastrophic. Frankly, less damage would be done to our relationship if Scarlet caught me in a compromising position with a hooker and a hash-pipe.

Yet another lesson we've learned is we're actually better at scrounging money than we are at a number of home improvement projects. It's typically a good idea to play to your strengths, right?

And, this is not to say that we're completely abandoning the DIY ethos. There are innumerable little projects that I plan to undertake in the coming months: refinishing floors, painting ceilings, installing hardware, et cetera. There is definitely more than enough fun for everyone!

In additional to all of this, we need to start planning for the holidays.

The Rum Diary

Hell, I have no idea where to begin. First, I need to remind myself that I will not complain. I’ve made a vow to you, and I aim to keep it. I will endeavor to be informative. If I slip into editorializing, I’ll make an effort to vent and not whine. No one with a rock solid home-improvement woody and a sperm count to make Freyr weep would stoop to whine. No! We’ll relish every infernal moment and thank the gods of the Underworld for this opportunity to prove ourselves worthy of their wrath.

Or, this is another way of telling you that I decided to try my hand a plumbing tonight. I mean it was a pretty good day so I had to ruin it somehow, right? I didn’t actually start the evening with plumbing; I screwed up a few other things first and decided to end the evening with a spectacular show of first-class fuckery.

Well, what did I do first? I watered the garden. Sounds pretty simple, but you’d be wrong to think that. For instance, you need to water your tomatoes from the bottom, where the stem meets the earth, and not just spray the whole plant. If you spray the plant from the top down, you’ll rot the fruit. That’s right, I just had to learn that the hard-way once but not tonight. No, I got into trouble weeding the garden. I may or may not have stuck my arm into a poison oak plant. It snuck up on me. In any case, I beat it to death with a hoe and then went inside to wash off with cold water.

Why cold water? You use cold water because hot water will open up all of you pores and the plant’s oil will seep deeper into your skin ensuring a spectacular reaction. Getting into a hot tub with your wife and drinking a bottle of champagne is absolutely the worst thing you could do next to burning it or eating it. All I can say for sure is that I’ve never eaten it.

Due to Poison Oak’s evil nature, I won’t know if I’ve got a good rash for three days. So, Friday night I should know. Sweet.

After my nice, cold washdown, I decided that I’d cut out hole in the entertainment center built-in so I could thread the stereo wires up to the TV cabinet. Should be easy, right? One bloody hole 2 3/8 inches wide in which to stick one 2 3/8 inch grommet. Sure, I really wanted a nice brass grommet, but all I got was this plastic one from Lowe’s because I just don’t give a shit about stuff like this anymore. Besides, the only place I could find a friggin brass one was a shady online site that was probably a front for a Chinese human trafficking ring. So, screw that. I have enough fun as it is.

Of course drilling one bloody hole was utterly beyond me. Why? I mean you just bought the correct sized bit didn’t you? Yes, I did. The problem is the only 2 3/8 inch bit Lowe’s had was from a company called Lenox. And instead of having one glorious hole-cutting unit, you have to buy the circular saw and the drill-bit guild as two separate pieces and put them together. It’s a great idea, right? Why would anyone want to just buy it all in solid piece when you could buy two? I’ll confess that putting the bit set together isn’t too arduous of a process unless you can’t find your Allen-wrench set. I could blame their temporary loss on having our storage room dumped on us, but I can’t find it because I’m disorganized. I’m afraid it’s a terminal condition. After wasting 20 minutes digging for them, I decided to apply Blitzkrieg military tactics to my situation. I bypassed this point of resistance and moved on to a project on which I could theoretically begin work.

As you may have suspected, the Devil Queen has lingered on in a Patomkin Village state since the appraisal. That is, looks often deceive. Here is the problem with our sinks.







That is right. They don’t work. Why? They do not work because of this feed-line. We bought these faucets off of eBay and I’d say that the feeds are not standard. Aside from the freakishly small connection that is screwed deeply into the faucet’s neither-regions, there is the ½ inch connector for the cut-off valve. The problem is we used ¼ inch cut-off valves because it is a standard size. I know, we’re idiots. You go along with the herd for once and you get screwed. We should have known.

Since we plan ahead, I didn’t confront this problem until around the midnight before our 9 AM appraisal. The evil genius that I am I opted for the obvious solution. I taped everything to the underside of the vanity. Nothing says class like half-assed, right?

Now it was time to make this Gordian Knot of plumbing functional. Since I managed to fit in some fore thought, I had everything I needed for this project on hand. Here it is.




The key to making this work is the threaded, ½ inch brass adaptor. Note the “hex nut” in the middle of the adaptor. This is very important. Without this “nut” you wouldn’t have any purchase to keep the adaptor from spinning when you screw the feed-lines on to it. The idea is to screw a normal sink feed-line (1/4 inch to ½) onto the cut-off valve, connect it to the brass adaptor, and connect the freak feed-line to the adaptor and then to the faucet.

It is important to note that you should not use plumber’s tape or putty on the adaptor in this case. If you look into the feed-line’s ½ inch connector, you see a rubber washer. The idea is to seat the adaptor so tightly that it makes a watertight seal with the washer. If you use tape or putty, it may keep you from seating the adaptor. And we all know what happens then: you get a leak.

The adaptor was easy to install. It was so easy that I am embarrassed that I didn’t do it earlier. That is until I remembered the first rule of plumbing: no matter what you do or how good of a job you do, the plumbing will not work. Ever. Remember this, it is a rule to live by if you do home improvement.

So, now that I’ve got the adaptors in place, it’s time to try them. First, open the faucets. Second, pick your cut-off valve of choice (I picked cold) and turn it on. Third, watch water spray out of the connection between the cut-off valve and the feed-line. Fourth, freak-out and turn off the water. Fifth, call yourself a fuckwitted dumbass for not remembering that you only hand-tightened the connection while setting up your Patomkin Village. Sixth, tighten the connection with a wrench and try again. Seventh, listen to the air clear out of the faucet and then the water pour into the basin. Eighth, congratulate yourself prematurely for a job well done. Ninth, watch water trickle onto the floor from the drainpipe. Then cuss for as long as you feel necessary. Turn off the water and mop up the mess. See! You’re getting the hang of it. Now you too can be a DIY plumber!

Anyhow, even though I know the drain leaks, I decide to try the hot water too. Fortunately, it works. Unfortunately, it flows like it has an enlarged prostate. Lovely. Then I remembered that you should take the mesh screen of the faucet’s nozzle when you first turn on the water. This is why.



Dirt, PVC shavings and whatever else that goes into a pipe while you're building a house. Removing this improved the flow, but it was still lacking. I start fiddling with the faucet thinking that maybe it isn’t open all the way. My efforts are rewarded with a fount of water squirting out of the hot water knob. Fuck. I quickly close it and think, “Shit. I broke the bloody faucet.” While pondering this, I crawl under the sink and try to tighten the drain trap to stop the leak. No luck. I need a second person to keep the drainpipe from spinning as I tighten or membership at gym so I’m strong enough to do it myself. Disgusted, I decide that it’s time take a cold shower (see poison oak comments above) and to get ready for bed.

As I wander the house fully naked looking for a towel, I’m thinking about the hot water faucet. Maybe it’s just clogged with the same junk that built up in the nozzle screen? I wander back to the bathroom and start messing with the sink when I swear that I hear someone whistling at me. I look around and out the huge window I’m standing in front of (no window treatments yet of course). No one. Then I think I hear it again. And again. I pull on a pair of shorts and go outside. There is no one there. Great. There is a crazy person in these woods somewhere and it is me.

Just for the record, I think that I’ve got the hot water fixed so I won’t have to completely disassemble this faucet. Now I can go to work on the second sink.

Anyhow, a cold shower and a glass of rum later, I was feeling much better. Sort of.

Rum Is My Silver Lining

Thank you for all the comments regarding the waterproofing of our crawlspace. I'll take some pictures so I can show you what we have to work with here. I'll have those up soon.

I have a monsterously long post that may make it up later tonight or tomorrow for sure (fingers crossed). Lets just say that I had a viseral encounter with the Devil Queen's plumbing last night which ended in rum. Yes, rum would be the silver lining for the evening. Anyhow, more later.

The Room of Unspeakable Pleasures

This looks innocuous enough, no? A fully functional toilet (the third and final one for the Devil Queen) and sink in our laundry room/third bathroom.


And here is the tub, our wicked, sinful tub.

Kristin, I blame you. Ever since I read this post of yours, I can never look at this plumbing fixture the same again.

You've shattered my innocence. I feel like the guy who walks in on the long-haired hippie licking the LSD off Hunter S. Thompson's red flannel shirt in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

"With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he'll never know."

Thanks to you, my slide into utter depravity has begun already. Before too long, all that will be left for me will be rum, sodomy, and the lash.

Demonology

In case you’re looking for some motivation to tackle your next big project, here is a little something for you. According to something I recently read (sorry, forgot where), demons like to haunt dirty, rundown and preferably abandoned homes. Tearing out that shag carpet and repainting the bedroom might be more than aesthetically pleasing, it might be a form of exorcism as well. There is nothing more satisfying that killing two birds with one stone, right?

Here at the Devil Queen, we have a new addition to our un-holy menagerie. A couple weeks ago it took up permanent residence in our laundry room. The light bulb burned out at roughly the same time and I just haven't worked up enough nerve to venture back there to replace it. In fact, I try not go back there at all. Why? What is so terrifying that even I refuse to tread there? This.

Can you see the little bastard mocking me from just inside the doorway? Don't be fooled, it may look exactly like a brand new, front loading washing machine, but it's not! It is a large, well formed plumbing demon.

Late at night I can hear it whispering to me. "John, you know you want to wash your socks. I could do such a good job if you'd just give me a chance. Just connect me to the waterlines, plug me in, and give me a spin. John? Are you listening John? I'm so lonely back here. John…" It just goes on and on for hours. I can't hardly stand it.

And the worst part is that I really want to hook it up now, but I'm spooked. I'm not sure if my mojo is strong enough to even attempt a simple plumbing job like this. Why the fear, the shame, the torment? Experience has proven to me that plumbing, no matter how simple it may appear, is actually simple. Plumbing is the Devil, and I'm not sure if I'm in good enough with the Good Lord to put my everlasting soul in peril. I doubt.

Ready or not, I have a feeling that this fallen angel will have to be wrestled with sooner rather than later. I guess I better see if I can find some holy water and a few good stakes on the way home tonight.