The Story Of Why Presents: Home Repair And Improvement

I decided that Bob the Plumber--need I even say it?--will not set foot into my house ever again, unless it is to deposit a large sack of money just inside the front door, whereupon he can take his leave and go fuck himself. And since I have no money to pay a plumber, or any other home-repair professional, I've taken it upon myself to fix as many of his gross mistakes as possible.



Today's task: the "furnace-vent pipe" that he cut, the one whose other end just happened to be connected to the drain end of our first-floor bathroom sink.



It took a while, but I got it right. I've learned several things today.



1. Purple primer is nasty stuff. Not only is it profoundly caustic, it's also very runny, and if you drip, it etches a spot and then stains that spot an irredeemable violet. My washer lid now has three purple droplets on it, and from everything I've read they'll be there til Judgement Trump.



2. It also really, really smells.



3. So does pipe cement.



4. The measurement of pipes is a most-exacting science.



I started out--cocky woman!--with only the two couplers I thought I'd need. I cut off the cap Bob had added on the soil-pipe end; I deburred the cut, sanded the other end, primed the pipes, primed the couplers, added cement and twisted the couplers onto the pipes. Pleased with myself, I measured and cut the pipe, deburred and sanded, primed and cemented, and when I pushed the length of pipe into the first coupler....



...I realized it was about half-an-inch too short to reach into the second coupler.



I said some bad words. In fact, I said many bad words. Then I walked up to the hardware store on Madison and Kostner, where they charged me, for four couplers, less than half of what I'd paid for the original two couplers at Home Depot. (Moral: support local business.)



I walked home. (Okay, I got some wings at Uncle Remus. THEN I walked home. I SAID I was gonna support local business, didn't I?) And it was a good thing I'd gotten four more couplers; once I sawed out the too-short pipe, I replaced it with one too long, and when I lost patience trying to cut with the hacksaw as one end of the pipe hung loose, I had to cut out the whole assembly and start over AGAIN. ("But why didn't you dry-fit before you cemented it?" I hear some wiseass asking. Well, I DID--but there's a difference between a dry pipe and one that's slippery with primer and cement. (Keep that in mind, gentlemen--it's something some of you would do well to learn. But--as always--I digress.) The first time it fit, but then when I twisted it, it slid into the pipe about 1/2 inch more than I counted on. The second time, I cut long to compensate for just that problem--and ran into a different problem.)



Finally I got it right.




To the left is the pipe before repair (including a decorative little arc of water, for illustrative purposes). To the right, my repair. It ain't pretty--notice how much purple primer there is on that coupling, by the little red arrow?--but it's functional. Furthermore, it's my first plumbing repair--well, unless you count the time I got the upstairs bath faucet to work by cleaning a full ounce of grit and gunk out of its strainer--and I'm pretty damn proud of myself. (I'm also covered with fine shreds of PVC plastic, owing to the amount of time I spent cutting the pipe with a hacksaw blade.)