EUREKA!!
While at the cottage I decided that God DID love me or I would not have this wonderful place to go to as a respite. I also found this “Mom and Pop” hardware store that had piles of junk in corners and an odd shaped gizmo that the wise old man behind the counter assured me would solve my plumbing problem.
HE WAS RIGHT!!
In one fell swoop it allowed me to reconnect my toilet and my gleaming new sink. My son waited by the sink anticipating Niagara Falls and … nothing, not a drop. We high-fived and thanked God and danced a little. The tide had been stemmed. The plagues had ended. We had entered the Promised Land.
So now it’s time to reconnect the drain, you know, the one that intersects with the kitchen. I used plumbers putty, Teflon tape, plumbers wrap tape, new washers and flanges. I was ready to rejoice. I turned on the tap and water flowed right through the drainpipes themselves into my brand new vanity and across my new bathroom floor. WHY?? What more can I do? The one piece of pipe that I had decided was redeemable had done precisely what the other pipes had done. DUHH! Of course it had. Only, it hadn’t shown signs of problems before now so what caused this leak?
Remember the Pex pipe that was running through to the kitchen? The new sink sat slightly lower than the old one and had slightly displaced the Pex pipe so that it was making contact with the old drainpipe. The pressure of the new pipe against the old one had caused the old drainpipe to rupture so I had to remove the drain again.
Five-dollar part and an easy fix right? Oh no…not this bathroom. The final removal of the fractured pipe revealed that the drainpipe inside the wall was cracked and broken for the first 3 inches. To get around this I had to fashion an insert that went all the way to the kitchen through the wall on the inside of the old damaged pipe. So, after 4 more hours of grunting, snorting, poking and prodding, my ancient apartment has finally given birth to a brand new sink. Yes that’s what I said, a sink. No new tub or shower. No new toilet or bidet. Just a sink.
Now on to the kitchen.
