The Fall of the House of Usher, Redux

Okay, the story of yesterday. It started out as a day when I was just going to write and then do a phone interview with a newspaper in the afternoon. This was kind of making me nervous, because (as part of my involuntary disappearance from professional writing) I haven't done an interview for what feels like years. So even though I'd talked to this reporter before and thought he was really nice (I think the article was mostly about ArmadilloCon in Austin and I didn't end up in it) I'm still a bit nervous.

But we've been having our house worked on to plug various leaks and fix problems (see: the fall of the house of usher) and one of the fallouts of that was that our contractor knew a company where we could get a remnant bathroom countertop (to replace the old, discolored, slightly dented one) that was much much better than what we had but that was a really good price and within our fixing-the-house budget. But we had to wait for the company to do another job with that type of counter so we could get the remnant. So yesterday morning I got a phone call that yes the remnant was ready and could they come over and install it, say, now? So that had to be a yes, and I called the contractor to see when he could come over to finish installing the faucet, and he was able to fit us in, so various home improvement people were now converging on the house.

Then while the countertop lady was taking out the old sink and faucet, morfin called to talk to me about the taxes which yes, were suddenly ready and had to be done today, about the same time as everything else that suddenly had to be done. Then the countertop lady came downstairs saying that thing you don't want to hear during home improvements: "Look at this! Pipes like this just aren't supposed to do that! How could this happen? This could have destroyed your house!"

Me: "Oh my God, what the hell is that?"

Her: "Check under the other sinks!"

( morfin said that over the phone it sounded like a Holmes on Homes episode)

I wish I'd taken a picture of the pipe. The stainless steel mesh had unraveled in two spots and the inner part was bulging out. Like the pipe had a very bad disease or something evil was trying to get out of it. It was clearly working up to a spectacular burst, and if it had, it would have caused a lot of damage. If it had happened at night, or while we were out of the house for even an hour, it could have cause a drywall-destroying $30,000 flood.

After the contractor got there, there were four people up in the bathroom trying to figure out how that happened. But the theory the contractor came up with is that the last person to work on the sink (which would have been something like 12 years ago) got a little wild with the plumbing torch and scorched this pipe, and it's been slowly coming apart from the water pressure ever since.

So basically: 1) yay for well-made pipes and 2) it's a really good thing we decided to change out the countertop and faucet.

With all this going on (including hooking up the new faucet taking much longer than it should because of 1) the house's plumbing coming out of the wall at angles and heights not normal for earth human plumbing 2) all the pipes and connections being very old and apparently shipped in from an alternate universe), the counter got installed, the new faucet got connected, the taxes got signed, and the interview got done.

At around 7:00 last night we were talking to the contractor about the hazards of old two-story houses and plumbing, and he said, "Whenever I leave the house for any length of time, I shut off the water."

Me: "You've seen too much, haven't you?"

And that was yesterday. But yay, all the work is now done and all the things are now fixed.

At least the ones we know about.