Originally Posted By Mrs 2oon Have you ever done anything small that created a large fix-it bill? At 6:30 this morning I decided to clean out the fridge. I had about 4 cups of cooked spaghetti that had been in there for about 5 days and decided to dump it. With the water running in the sink I put it down the garbage disposal. BIG MISTAKE! Water stopped draining on both sides of the sink. After spewing a few choice words I decide to stop by the grocery store and get Drano after dropping off my 15 year old at summer school. So I pick up the Drano and pour half the bottle in each side of the sink. I wait...and wait....nothing. At 3:00pm 2oony starts doing the snake thing with the pipes. Nothing. After an hour I call the plumber. The plumber arrives at 5:00pm and begins a three hour ordeal of snaking out everything, crawling under the house, massive amount of degreaser and a trip to the hardware store. Finally, he finds the problem and it was.....spaghetti noodles. At $125 per hour it was an expensive mistake. We did have a 10% coupon from the last time they were hear a few months ago and he did give us a small discount because my son is a Boy Scout. (The plumber saw me sewing merit badges on my son's scout sash and he is an Eagle Scout.) So...what other things do we need to be aware of?
Originally Posted By Mrs 2oon ^^^...and while all this was going on my kids were starving and there was a fire in the auto body shop at the high school down the street.
Originally Posted By Lisann22 Aye yi yi Mrs 2oon! I had the great lint in the dryer hose fiasco. $2000 dollars later, we have new piping, vent and hoses. Some nitwit told us to stick a water hose in the hose and flush out the lint to the side yard. Yeah right!
Originally Posted By TALL Disney Guy <At 3:00pm 2oony starts doing the snake thing with the pipes. Nothing.> <---waits for details from the 2oonster himself
Originally Posted By Mrs 2oon Lisann...we also have a dryer issue. We had to replace the metal ducts because of wear on the ones we had. Several owners ago someone built in a folding table right next to the water heater and also where the dryer vent is. 2oony was having a difficult time installing the metal ducts and after hours of swearing and banging around in the garage he decided to install vinyl ducts. Well....we found out the vinyl ducts are not up to code and we have to replace them AGAIN. This wouldn't be a difficult job if the water heater and dryer duct were in a place that was somewhat easy to get to! Why did we buy a house that was built in 1959?
Originally Posted By TALL Disney Guy <2oony was having a difficult time installing the metal ducts and after hours of swearing and banging around in the garage he decided to install vinyl ducts.> Ah, more golden 2oony nuggets! <Why did we buy a house that was built in 1959?> Because that was truly a golden year---the year Walt Disney's masterpiece "Sleeping Beauty" was released, and the year torchy-voiced Lorrie Morgan was born into the world.
Originally Posted By Mrs 2oon ^^^ I think it was more that we wanted to stay in the San Francisco Bay Area and we couldn't afford a "new" house! LOL
Originally Posted By Lisann22 Ah, well after the "new" fireplace was put in we discovered that all the phone line jacks in the living room were destroyed AND the cable wire was stuck under the house. So, we had to call comcast to lay new lines, still didn't work. Discovered that squirrels were having fun knawing on the wires outside the house so $600 later, a new wire box and new lines under the house - they still don't work. My bro-in-law is going to start all over again once summer is over and he won't suffocate crawling under the house.
Originally Posted By Mrs 2oon Now that's a pain. Which lines don't work...Comcast or the phone lines? Your fireplace is very beautiful! It's very calming. Regarding the squirrels....Comcast told us that the protective covering that they put on the wires is soy-based and squirrels like the taste and they just chew right through it.
Originally Posted By Lisann22 Phone lines. <sigh> I remembered the soy-based wires from 2ooney and asked Cableman, he confirmed. LOL!
Originally Posted By Mrs 2oon Because our neighborhood is older the wires are not underground. Every time we see a squirrel on the wire 2oony starts yelling at it. The squirrel just sits on the wire looking at 2oony...not even bothering to move!
Originally Posted By Mrs 2oon When we first bought this house seven years ago we thought that the squirrels and "wild life" in the backyard were cute. The kids would put pretzels out on the fence and 2oony put corn munch on a squirrel feeder. Now we just want to shoot them with a BB gun!
Originally Posted By TALL Disney Guy ^^^LOL!! Mrs2oon's on a roll tonight! Perhaps unintentionally, but still, LOL!
Originally Posted By Lisann22 A few LPer's were witness to the daily great Squirrel chase between Sammy, Simba and 100 squirrels that live in the trees behind our house. When they go through that doggie door the whole dang house shakes - I've come to hate those critters. They torment my puppies and hide their peanuts in our floor pots. Our dogs are trilingual in Squirrel calling: English, Mutsun and Spanish. ;>
Originally Posted By WilliamK99 I still want to hear about the snake thing down the pipes...... lol, or maybe I dont......
Originally Posted By TALL Disney Guy I wanna hear about all of this two-sided 2oony stuff (funny to us, not-so-funny to him, lol---at least at the time [maybe he can look back fondly now, but I doubt it!])
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>I still want to hear about the snake thing down the pipes......<< LOL! I was wondering if someone would question that phrasing! Alas, it's not exciting stuff. I hope everyone reading this learns from our expensive lesson that you should only put a VERY minimal amount of food debris down the disposal. I only wish i had spent a little more time trying to fix the thing myself before calling the plumber. The clog was in an area easily reachable had I known. Ah well, hindsight is 20/20 and all that... : (
Originally Posted By TALL Disney Guy Well, thanks fer the tip. I'd never had a disposal until I got this apartment, and don't wanna mess it up bein' a "newbie" and all (can you be a 2 year and 5 month-old newbie? lol).
Originally Posted By EdisYoda Wellllll... my mom's toilet had this little problem of running without stopping so we decide to fix it... on MY birthday of all days. We bought new insides for it a few days before, then while my cousins were here for my party, we discovered that to replace all the parts, we had to take the tank off. Of course, we discovered the bolts were rusted solid. After 90 minutes of trying to wrestle them off, we gave up. The next day we called the plumber and we are the proud (but poorer) owners of a new Kohler toilet after spending almost $500 on the plumber.
