A Slow Drain OR Decades of Gunk

Dug finally rerouted the kitchen drain. To give you an idea of what we were dealing with, I've provided illustrations.

The first is a diagram of how water drained from the kitchen sink to the sewer line. Notice the many-cornered path the waste water had to travel. This route + corroded pipes = eventual slowing of drain.

The second diagram illustrates the new route. Straight lines, few corners. Easy peasy.

Not only does the kitchen sink have happiness, but our downstairs (and right now, only) shower can drain by itself. The kitchen sink drain pipe used to run into the shower drain and often plugged it. Few things are grosser than taking a shower that stops draining and suddenly pieces of decomposing food start floating around your bare ankles. Nastiness.

But now it's all better. One more step to a completely happy house.

For your viewing enjoyment. Here is one last picture. This is a cross-section of a piece of pipe that Dug removed. Believe it or not, this is not the worst of them. (Sorry I didn't add anything in the picture for reference. That hole is just big enough to let a nickel fall through.) And we wondered why the sink and shower were always clogging...

You've got free labor, use it!

A great day has dawned. My children are now old enough to help. I mean it. Not "help" as in make things harder and get in my way, but really help. Our job yesterday was to remove all the nails from the bathroom studs. When the lathe and plaster was ripped out, we didn't take the time to pull the nails. We are now at the point where they need to be gone.

It started with Dug armed with a nail puller and I with a hammer. Of course, since Dug was in charge, I had to pull a nail, grab it , then fling it in the garbage can. A dropped nail was immediately located and dealt with. Left to my own devices I would have been pulling them like crazy, letting them fall where they may, but once again, Dug's method proved the most efficient.

Our oldest son wandered into the kitchen, saw what we were doing and wanted to help. We had an extra hammer, didn't want to bend over or squat, so we said, "Sure, you do the ones by the floor."

In walks oldest daughter. "I want to help, too." I told her that the best way to help was by loading the dishwasher. We didn't have another hammer and it was her brother's turn right now. She didn't like that. Of course she wouldn't. Nails are much funner than dishes. But I told her that after she did some dishes, it would be her turn. She loaded it up, asking, "Is that enough?" after ever dish. I told her she had to load it all.

When she was done, her and her brother switched places and she pulled nails while brother washed the non-fitting dishes by hand. It all worked very well and I was very proud of myself for orchestrating it.

In the end we pulled over 446 nails! Not sure how many over because I got the idea to count them after I had already started. Now, if we had done it my way it would have been a lot more cleaning up to do, but it would have been a great picture, right?! Probably close to 500 nails scattered on the floor. That would have been cool. Oh well.