Taking Care of Business
Tags: DIY, Life Lessons, Stay At Home Parent, Home Improvement, House

Man, I am feeling accomplished. The terror of day 2 has worn off for me and now I’m getting stuff done on our old 1910 triplex which our family loves so much. It’s a wonderful home with so many nasty little home improvement surprises. Now that I don’t have the excuse of prioritizing my time elsewhere, I’m forced to come face to face with some of these projects that I’ve put off over the years.

Example 1 — We’ve had a water problem down in the crawlspace for years. A bunch of work has been done but lately I’ve noticed new problems popping up. The big one is that one of the beams under the house was getting wet during heavy rains. I don’t know much about taking care of a house but I know this is bad. Water leads to rot and then the house falls down with or without us in it. I tracked the issue down to an area near our kitchen fridge. I pulled the fridge, examined the darks of the unfinished nether walls yet found nothing. I spent the remainder of the day spraying a hose against the side of the house, then crawling under to see the water make its way down the path that I’d identified (I’m not sure why I did this but it felt right). The result was still nothing. I was out of ideas. The next day it rained hard so I hung out in the crawlspace for a while during the storm and booyah! The issue exposed itself. The pipe for the sump pump ran right underneath the beam in question and it had a crack along a joint. Every time it did it’s pumping thing the water sprayed right up onto the floorboards and foundation. I figured this was an easy enough fix so I quickly measured the pipe (2 in, which I later found was wrong) and headed out to my old stomping grounds, Home Depot, (despite Lowes being closer) to get the supplies. I was feeling like a pro home inspector at this point so I decided to take on the intermittent gas smell in the upstairs apartment.

Before I get into example 2, I do want to clarify that the gas smell was pretty negligible but we had received a few complaints from guests so we wanted to do what we could to address it. I know gas stuff involves wrenches so I went over to my neighbor Tom’s house to borrow a couple decent tools. Also, the only thing that uses gas upstairs is a stove and amazingly there was an Appliance Repair guy (Keir from Appliance Repair Geeks who was awesome) getting into his car as I was walking Cormac back from school that morning. I stopped him to see if he had some time to look at it. He didn’t but he did tell me that aluminum gas lines notoriously leak and that could be the culprit in this case. It was enough for me to move on.

Onto Example 2 — Let me start with this. Gas scares me. As it should scare anyone with my knowledge and experience working with gas. The one thing that makes me comfortable are those little shut off valves. I figure I can shut that thing off then mess around with whatever I want to with the appliance in question, in this case a stove. My experience working with gas appliances is pretty much limited to stoves and hot water heaters though. So I’m feeling really confident at this point after figuring out the sump pump thing and rocking out my HD trip grabbing all of the supplies I need along with some paint for another couple projects. So I start wrenching. I start with the side of the line connected to the stove but I couldn’t quite muster up the strength to loosen the connector. I turned to the line connected to the gas pipe. That one was much easier so I started unthreading. More confidence. As I lift the line off of the pipe I instantly know something is not right. The hissing sound quickly turns into the most distinct gaseous aroma I’ve ever smelled. What could have happened? I turned the shutoff valve into the off position. Quickly I double checked. It was in the off position. So why in the hell am I starting to become queasy with lack of oxygen? Not enough time to troubleshoot. I frantically start to screw the gas line from the stove back onto the pipe. My nervousness made this difficult. I couldn’t tell if I was making progress or if I was aimlessly twisting a piece of metal around and around as my world became more breathless and prone to explosion. Finally the seal was closed again. I stood shaking then opened the window and the door to let things air out. As I do in most situations like this, I turned to Sarah with a “what do I do and why did I make this mistake” facial expression. I called Keir first who told me I should call a plumber which makes sense because he does appliances, not gas lines. Then I called our favorite plumbers M. Cary and Daughters. We’ve used them for all of my mess ups in the past and they came out in no time and confirmed that the gas shut off valve problem was just a stripped lever. The plumber (not one of the daughters) even told me that I got the wrong part (and wrong size) for the pipe problem downstairs which saved me one of those classic moments where you start a project, quickly realize you have the wrong part, and realize that you have to go back to the hardware store. Thank you M. Cary and Daughters. By Friday though, both projects were done and I saved at least 500 bucks by doing them myself. Let’s just hope they take.

My best friend. A project finished…