Home Disrepair

There are few words that strike fear into my budgeting heart than "plumbing", "electrical" or "foundation".

Knock wood, we are only being assaulted by the first word at the moment.

Seems MommaJ doesn't exactly understand the intricacies of pipes.  Or the inability of an In*Sink*Erator to grind a week's worth of leftovers that were still leftover two weeks later.  Or that running said disposal over and over and over again could actually create worse problems, instead of fixing them.

All I know is that I'm staring at a kitchen with dishes from two days stacked on the counter and a dishwasher full, ready to be run.  Truly, after breakfast this morning, it would either be clean the dishes in the bathtub or run to the store to buy disposable stuff.  And, make an admission that even two bottles of GUARANTEED OR YOUR MONEY BACK pipe cleaner just can't do the trick every time.

And you know, when the plumber tells you that the person who did the kitchen plumbing is an "idiot" and that our pipes broke HIS MACHINE, you hear the sounds of your children's college fund being drained.  At least, if I'm going to be writing a check with multiple zeroes, I'd like to have SOMETHING pretty to show for it. 

Our behind the scenes challenged house continues to rear its ugly head.  We knew we had car parts in the bathroom plumbing and we knew that the air stack in the kitchen might eventually give us trouble, but we didn't know the extent to which it would give us trouble.  Seems our former house owner used outdoor sprinkler parts to cobble together the plumbing.  And, they just don't move at the right angles to allow plumbing equipment to extract clogs.

So, when everything is said and done, we'll have:
One wall torn apart to expose the plumbing.
One new set of pipes that don't involve weird turns and can't be called "outdoor" anything.
One clog, which the plumber is in his second hour of unstopping, cleared.

Home ownership ain't the bed of roses it's made out to be, that's for sure.