Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Water

I am waiting for the plumber.

My house has a personality...a twisted, mean personality. I've been saving up for several years now to redo my kitchen, to get rid of the dark walnut cabinets and the self-stick tile that no longer meets up right...the rusted sink and the counter, which has a pattern that looks like brown burlap.

This spring I decided I'd saved enough to get started. I picked out cabinets and tile. I even started flirting with the idea of solid surface countertops...ah, Corian.

Another thing I'd like to do is install a sprinkler system. I am pathologially afraid of fire. A friend of mine recently purchased a new house, and by new I mean one being build right now, and she was showing me the zoned fire suppression system and alarms it comes with. I was very jealous. I mentioned to a fire engineer I happened to be working with at the office that I was impressed that new houses had these systems, and he told me you could install sprinklers in existing buildings. I looked into it, but it isn't really feasible (economically, if nothing else) in my house.

But my house has that evil sense of humor. House said "You want sprinklers? I'll give you sprinklers!" and next think I knew my basement copper pipes were full of pinhole leaks.

Now, I'm actually pretty lucky. Although I have multiple leaks, they've all been in my basement, unlike neighbors who've had them ruin painted walls and ceilings, or one family down the street...during last year's blizzard, they had a leak that shorted out the furnace. They decided to re-pipe, which took about a week, and then they had to repaint and repaper the whole house because of the holes in the walls.

I'd read about a process called ACE DuraFlo where they coat the inside of the pipes with epoxy to stop the leaks. I decided to give them a call, since I started having nightmares of the leaks in the upstairs pipes as well. It was easy enough to strap a neoprene patch to a leak under the suspended basement ceiling, but what if it leaked in the kitchen? It might further warp my lovely self-stick tile floor!

Here's the funny part...the estimate to fix the pipes cost exactly what I'd saved for the kitchen remodel.

So anyway, yesterday they shot the epoxy through the pipes, and now I'm waiting for the plumber to come back and reconnect all my sinks and stuff. Then I'll wash some dishes in my rusty sink and put them away in the walnut cabinets I'll be living with for several more years, as I lust after Corian from afar.