Things to be grateful for...

Even though a pipe under my floor is broken and preventing us from using our kitchen drain...we can still wash dishes. It takes more time, and we all need to be even more careful about ensuring all food scraps are scraped into the garbage, we can still flush the dirty dish water down the hall bathroom toilet, and we're managing. The world is only running slower, but has not be forced to come to a complete stand still here in our home.

Breakfast still happens! ...our daily bread...

I have a wonderful husband who knows what I ACTUALLY like. That red mug was my one and only truly needed and desired thing I received under our tree this year. (He also got me fragrance free tallow and goat milk soaps for my stocking). While there were other well meaning gifts, I can't use any of them, and now have to find them new homes. Yes, I know this makes me sound ungrateful, but I can't lie, and feel it's a disservice to pretend to like things. Anyhow, being allergic and sensitive to perfumes and much of modern day chemicals (which I've been avoiding for many years now), some presents aren't really gifts I can enjoy; as I can't even touch them. However, I don't have to pretend I like  the set of oversized "red" coffee mugs, because I  genuinely like and will use them daily for as long as they will last.... Say I just noticed, this dime store plate in my picture, a present I received before heading off to college so many years ago. Most of my dishes don't even match, nor are any longer part of a complete set, but with six kids, and future military moves sometime in our future, I think it's foolish to get anything beyond what we need for our daily, regular meals. So I'm grateful for my beautiful red coffee mugs, and the cheap plate that hasn't broken (even if I've long grown out of love with it's style).

And while trying to figure out how to fix our pipes, and by whom, and with what money....and often feeling like we ought to just flee our home to escape the endless barrage of shocking repairs...we're grateful it's only pipes and water, and not some terrorist group trying to destroy our very lives. When you think about your worries, realize they pale in comparison to those of those being persecuted in so many parts of our world today.

Drain pain update

Pipe is broken. At the very least the laundry room floor will need to be excavated... Maybe more. The drain guy that came this morning, while he waved the consultation fee, didn't feel he could do anything to fix it, and referred us on to a contractor friend. So at the moment, no dishwasher, no laundry, and washing dishes in our plastic tubs to avoid water going down the drain. I'm praying it won't rain, because our outside drain could cause the house to flood.

I wonder if I should call our homeowner insurance? Guessing this wouldn't be covered.  

Drain Pain

Oh the joys of home ownership! Even though we had our laundry room drain snaked just a few short months ago, over the past month it had began to back up again. Our go-to plumber has never been able to give us an explanation as to why this drain always spews out garbage disposal waste from the kitchen drain above, and always classified them as separate issues. While this might be true in some extent, when this drain is backing up, the water is always coming from the kitchen line.

With the emergency fund depleted from the "urgent" bathroom redo, our hope rested on the right tool, a rented power snake auger from the (not so nearby) big box hardware store, and we sought to remedy the clog ourselves over the weekend. Unfortunately, despite funneling the twisting coil into our drain for several hours, we were unsuccessful in clearing the line. Inadvertently, things got a little worse when the auger drill bit disconnected from the line and became trapped in our pipe. Our blind attempts at retrieving the bit failed, though we were able to bring up several broken bits from much smaller (probably manual) snake lines that had broken in our pipe some time (before us) in the past. In addition, most ominously, we hit on what seemed to be a deep amount of what we think is marine clay. This entire area sits atop marine clay, which expands and contracts as the ground becomes saturated or dries. Not Biblically inspired, our founding father's selected a swamp upon which to build their capital city, and of course the surrounding area is much the same consistency.

While the auger rental cost us a little under $100, our DYI efforts aren't going to fix this, and neither is our go-to plumber. Tomorrow a drain specialist is set to come scope the drain with a camera and I hope it's not as bad as I suspect.

Incidentally, today we met with a lawyer to see where we stand with the surprise invoice the bathroom contractor sent several weeks after the "final invoice" was sent, and my "paid in full" check was cashed. They claim they screwed up the invoice (the original appeared accurate and was as expected and the second was very questionable) and are claiming we now owe them over $1,300 more. Not surprisingly, they've recently run afoul with Angie's List and this once A rated business has all of a sudden been stripped of their search engine and advertising privileges. While I've yet to place any feedback from our transaction, my guess is I'm not the only one who is currently having issues with this company. It's rather unfortunate too, because we have so much more work to be done in our home and I had hoped this would be our go-to company for some of the other things we need to have done in our home, but that notion is gone. I just pray this can be settled justly.