I’m not a superstitious person (I don’t THINK I am, anyway) but sometimes I think this old house of ours is haunted — or maybe it’s just out to get even with me for the many years of home repair neglect it has suffered at the hands of my ignorance.
Last weekend, the house struck back — to the tune of a seriously clogged upstairs toilet line and $225 in repairs. I understand from my son (he’s an engineer and not a plumber, but he’s had to call a plumber more recently than I) that $225 wasn’t bad for what all the plumber had to do. Plus, it was on a Saturday afternoon when we had to use the plumber’s services. (Thank God for 24/7 plumbing services.)
We have a house that’s about 100 years old, give or take a couple of years. It was a “fixer upper” when we bought it. That was a major mistake because I simply am NOT a fixer-upper guy when it comes to home repair/refurbishing. Nevertheless, 30+ years later we’re still here and the old house is still standing.
In the case of the upstairs bathroom, it’s not exactly the sort of classy place where you’d expect to find Grohe faucets. It’s very much an old, low-budget, almost-never-used spare bathroom. Many years ago when our two kids were young and living at home, the upstairs in general was kept in better repair. Now that they’re gone from home, my wife and I rarely go up there except to store things.
I have no idea exactly how the toilet line got clogged. We worked on it (my wife and I makes “we”) using a plunger and several days worth of chemical treatments. We thought the problem was pretty well solved.
Until a week ago today when we were going upstairs and down to get our Christmas tree and decorations set up. In passing, we flushed the upstairs toilet twice just to see if the chemical treatments were clearing the clog. Shortly after the second flush, I heard something dripping — and discovered water dripping from one of the downstairs ceilings, right below the upstairs toilet drain.
I won’t go into the gory details, but I swear this old house really IS out to get me. Who knows what it’ll try next??
Looking foward (?) to the plumbing surprises of the new year …