Plumbing Woes

When it comes to doing home improvement projects there are certain things that I just cannot stand doing, mainly because I suck at them.  Number one would be electrical work, either because I am afraid I'll shock myself, or I will end up wiring something wrong and end up causing a fire.  But a close second would be plumbing work, which was the main reason I hired someone to redo out bathroom.

However, Sunday morning Kris called me to the bathroom after she was done with her shower.  The tub was probably a good 3 to 4 inches deep in standing water.  I immediately thought that the girls had not put the hair strainer  in place and there was a big hair clog in there.  I tried snaking it a little bit but I didn't get anything up, so at 9:30 Sunday morning I had to go to Home Depot to look for Drano.  I was hesitant to pour it in, because if it didn't work, I was going to have a tub full of caustic chemicals.  But I did it anyway.  And as expected, it didn't work.  So I was forced to take the access panel off and take the trap apart.

I had to reach in and close the drain to keep the tub from draining while I cleaned out the pipes.  Well, unfortunately, there was no clog in the trap.  So I went from the trap back to the drain, also no clog.  So I determined that the clog was past the trap which required taking even more pipes apart to snake them. 

This was all a result (in my opinion) of the contractor not doing what I wanted with the drain.  We had a fixed, pop-up drain previously that I hated because the drain would always get clogged with the girls' hair, and I could never snake it.  And because of the pop-up drain, I couldn't use one of those plastic hair strainers.  I had asked for just a plain, flat drain, but Kris had also asked to get a drain that matched the bath fixtures so we ended up with another pop-up drain.  At least I was able to find a tub strainer, but the slits in it are bigger than I would like and I think a lot of hair still goes down the drain.

Anyway, having the access panel off at least also allowed me to finally fix another flaw that the contractor left us, that being he did not seal the bathtub overflow pipe.  Shortly after he finished We ended up with water all over because the overflow pipe leaked.  So since September no one had been able to take a bath.  I found this out all by mistake though as I was trying to fix the clog in the tub.  I was trying to go though the overflow pipe to snake the drain so I had to take the cover off which is when I found out that there was no gasket around it.  

At least now, the pipes are all clean and sealed, and it only took me 5 hours.  And at least it was less painful than watching the Packers game yesterday.