My life is difficult enough without me being my own worst enemy at times, where good intentions go horribly wrong. This happens more often than I care to admit. You know how one little thing can start snowballing into a bigger and bigger issue. It happens to us all. I’ve become a master of covering up my mistakes though!
What makes it worse is my ability to lose control, which further compounds the issue at hand. Common sense and deep breathing go out the window.
“What a friggin’ idiot.” For the next four days that thought played over and over in my head.
The bonehead act of the week, or perhaps the biggest screw up since the beginning of the year. Just plain stupid, and having no one else to blame but myself made it all the worse.
This one plain stupid move compounded itself over and over, like a domino of mistakes, and the attempts at fixing them are still not complete. The best laid plans as they say.
A simple story which started last Wednesday, four days ago. Let’s hope it ends sooner than later, as it ain’t done yet and my worry level is through the roof.
The kitchen sink was clogged for the second time in a year. No big deal right? The culprit of the clog is the chicken fat that goes down the drain after we have roasted thighs and breasts for the two terror dogs. How did I know this? Because I paid a plumber $600 to snake the drain the first time, who pulled out a large wad of congealed chicken fat.
Fat is insoluble in water and apparently builds up over time to form a clog, an impassable dam of chicken fat in our case.
So here goes my simple train of thought, which made perfect sense at the time.
If I go buy a new drain auger (also sometimes known as a mechanical drain snake) to help clear the drain it will only cost $120 bucks and I can do the job myself! Easy peasy as my granddaughter says. A perfectly sound idea. A quick trip to Home Depot to buy the auger and I’m all set to go.
I waited until the missus had gone to work early in the morning and began my simple task that would save me a bunch of bucks. How hard could it be to open the drain access, run my new power auger down the clogged pipe and whammo! All done.
I gathered up the needed tools, some rags, paper towels and rubber gloves (to protect my new manicure. Can’t ruin that.) and good to go. I even dug out my knee pads, the only way I could kneel down under the sink.
Cleaning the cabinet out was interesting. Besides the trash can we had a cleaner for every surface imaginable under there. Dishes, glassware, marble, wood floors, granite, stainless steel and chrome. Who knew? Not to mention 3 different bleaches of varying caustic danger.
The water level had gone down in the sink, so I assumed the drain water wouldn’t be much of an issue. Just in case, I was smart enough to put a 4” deep aluminum pan under the cleanout. Clever move thinking ahead. The cleanout cap was easily removed with a pipe wrench…and here came the water. The water that remained in line was more than I had guessed.
Thank god I had put the pan under there. The dirty water that drained out filled the roasting pan up about 3” deep. Half a gallon? Just guessing. Boy was I proud of myself for averting disaster.
Now in order to get the drain auger in there I had to move this pan of water out of the way, so I gently pulled the pan out of the cabinet, stood up…
And poured the whole thing into the kitchen sink. I quickly realized what the hell I just did.
“What an idiot…a real friggin’ idiot!”
You guessed it.
The cleanout cap was still off and laying on the area rug at my feet.
The dirty water exited the drain cleanout in a quick whoosh, filling the cabinet under the sink, then turned into a small waterfall as it rushed out of the cabinet and onto the hardwood floor, soaking the area rug.
I grabbed the roll of paper towels and started ripping off sheet after sheet, trying to soak it all up. “What a mess you idiot, just a big friggin’ mess.” Even the dogs looked at me like they knew I just did something dumb.
I finally got it all mopped up though, thinking the worst was the wet area rug in front of the sink. I still had 7 hours until the wife got home, and with the help of a fan I could fix that.
Then I saw it, the hole in the cabinet floor where the drain pipe runs through. A 2 ½” hole to accommodate a 2” pipe. A little, or maybe a lot of water had followed the pipe down that ½” gap. Except the water would have run down the outside of the pipe, not inside where it belonged.
(A warning to Readers: if the word “shit” is bothersome you might want to stop here.)
“Shit…shit shit shit.”
I’m quoting so it’s not like I’m writing obscene blogs here.
I guess I should explain the kitchen layout a bit more. It’s a double wide stainless kitchen sink set in a big beautiful granite kitchen island. Yep, right in the middle of the open concept main floor. The island sits directly above the fully finished family room in the basement.
Maybe you figured out this next part…
I ran downstairs, turned on the lights, and there it was: a rapidly growing brown spot right in the middle of the family room ceiling.
“Oh shit. Shit. Shit shit shit. Now what the hell am I going to do?” Talking out loud to myself.
I knew what I was going to try and do, which was figure out how I was going to keep this all from my wife. Oh boy, she is going to be friggin’ mad.
“Why the hell didn’t you call the effing plumber?” I could hear her saying this over and over and over. For the next 20 years.
Shit, why didn’t I?
There wasn’t much I could do in the basement besides stand there and keep saying shit. So, I headed back up to my original task of unclogging the sink, which needed to be done before I could address this new problem with the ceiling in the basement.
Snaking the drain was easy thank god, the clog of fat was struck 15’ down the pipe and pulled back out in a sick slurping sound. Yuck. The drain cap was put back and the sink was tested. It worked fine. Then I cleaned up my mess and put everything back in the cabinet.
Easy peasy, yeah right.
I had about 5 hours before the wife came home. I can get away with the kitchen, I thought. The sink was fixed after all. Everything was put away and cleaned up. A fan on the area rug set on high for 2-3 hours should dry it out, heck she never went barefoot anyway.
Back down to the basement, where the plate-sized stain had grown to a 3’ x 2’ section in the ceiling. From what I could tell the water didn’t bleed through or damage the ceiling, just created a really large stain. Really large. A little damp- feeling and brown was all. From what I could tell anyway. One point in my favor, I didn’t have to replace the ceiling itself.
Another point in my favor was Mrs. Kyd rarely went into the basement. She will, but rarely. With just the two of us we never really use the family room, as nice as it is. Another Dyson fan was set on high here, hoping to move enough air to start drying the ceiling.
I needed help, I thought, so I ran upstairs, grabbed the car keys and headed to the neighborhood paint store. We’d been a customer there forever, having repainted the entire home twice now. Lots of paints.
“Hey Andrew, I need help!” and then proceeded to tell him about my screw up that morning,
“Shit, are you ever in trouble.” was his reply. Andrew knew my wife. Yes I was in deep trouble.
“You can’t do anything now, just let it dry out overnight then hit it with a coat of oil based primer. Then let it dry for at least 4 hours and repaint the stain with ceiling white.”
He went on to explain that since the room was just repainted, and no one smokes, I can probably get by just covering the stain really well. Making sure to feather the edges to blend the new paint over the old. Might, I repeat “might” not have to repaint the whole ceiling. Oh god.
The paint, primer, brushes and drop cloth was a mere $125.
That was four days ago. The white primer coat went on the minute Mrs. K went to work on Thursday. But when she left she said “I’ll be home after lunch and plan on working from home tomorrow.”
Shit…shit, shit, shit.
I still needed to get the ceiling painted white over the primer. I managed to sneak downstairs to see how it looked. Yep a big stain partially hidden by the primer, but if you looked up you could tell. I might need another coat of primer before the final coat.
All I have to do is keep her out of the basement all weekend, then hopefully finish covering up my screw up first thing Monday when she heads to the office.
2 more days, then everything will be back to normal. That’s the plan. It’s Saturday afternoon that I’m writing this tale and by Monday everything will be back to normal.
4 days of panic, worry and over the top anxiety was coming to a close.
I began to feel confident enough to start to relax, now that I had covered up the biggest screw up of the year that no one will ever know. At least the only one that matters will ever know.
Two more days, but the worst was over…