It's a plumb messy job

I have completed some mighty fine plumbing work on the bathroom sink in my little bungalow in my reverse-chic South Austin neighborhood. (Let me digress here: It’s really IN now to describe small houses as bungalows; mine is a bungalow-ito.)

My bathroom sink has been draining very slowly for 4-5 months; last weekend all draining stopped. For a few hours I used my kitchen sink to brush my teeth, wash my hands, believing that the stopped up bathroom sink would be ok in a few hours.

(Wait—does ANYONE CARE ABOUT MY PLUMBING ISSUES? If this is too boring for you readers, you are excused. I must admit it’s titillating to me!)

As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, the plumbing fairy godmother was doing her best to dissolve the clogged up pipes, I’m sure, but the water remained in the sink over night. That’s when I decided to take care of the plumbing issue my very own self.

I borrowed a plumbing snake, removed the standing water in the sink, cup by cup, and smartly placed a huge pan underneath the sink. After unscrewing the curvy pipe (so glad for the big pan), I rammed that metal snake back and forth in the straight pipe until something happened. I don’t know exactly what except that some black goop started rolling out of the pipe, into the carefully placed pan.

Thinking I had fixed the problem, I turned on the water. Since I had not plugged up the hole for the stopper, the water poured into the pan. After putting the stopper doohickey back into the pipe and tightening the screw, I tried once again. Lo and behold the water ran right down the pipe—just as the god of plumbing intended.

So far, the drain is able to handle all the hand-washing, teeth-brushing water, and this makes me very proud. It’s the mess I left behind that’s the bigger issue.

Cleaning up a mess is so less satisfying than fixing a problem. In this case, however, I quickly put everything in the bathroom back together and I'm now giving tours of my bathroom!