Disaster Strikes

And it's always when you least expect it, isn't it?

On Saturday I was washing dishes at the sink in the kitchen while Tom was studying in the living room.

And I felt a few drops of water drip onto my toes.

Thinking I had gotten overzealous in my dish-washing endeavour, I searched the countertop area surrounding the sink looking for the culprit puddle of water that I was sure would be there.

But there wasn't one. That countertop was dry as a bone.

Panic mounting and my heart in my throat, I opened the cabinet doors under the sink...

Water. Was. EVERYWHERE!

It came gushing out the moment I opened the doors like a giant waterfall with plastic bags and cleaning supplies floating in it like little toy boats.

Not. Good.

As Tom later told me, all he heard me saying at this point in time during the crisis was "Oh honey, oh honey, oh honey!" Apparently I was so overwhelmed I could not get a coherent sentence out for the life of me.

Tom asked, "What?! What's wrong?!"

All I yelled was, "Water!!!!"

Without another word I shut off the faucet and sprinted down to the basement to grab an armful of our "rag" towels to soak up the area of our kitchen currently acting as a lake when Tom walked into the kitchen and finally realized what was going on. Nothing like only being able to spit out one-word answers during a crisis, huh?

When I got back upstairs armed with a boatload (pun intended) of towels Tom had taken out the remaining items left inside the cabinet and was inspecting the plumbing.

The  brand new plumbing we had just installed about a year ago. Crikey.

This is a photo of the old plumbing before we replaced it..

Turns out there was a piece of pipe that we didn't replace and was really too short, and while it worked just fine to begin with, over the course of a year the daily use and shaking of the garbage disposal slowly loosened the pipe fittings and it slowly worked it's way out of the pipe it was connected to, creating a gap and ending with - you guessed it - a lovely waterfall in our kitchen. Which, looking back, we recalled finding that exact same piece of pipe with the same problem - loose and about to fall out, back when we removed the sink and plumbing to DIY our granite tile countertops. You'd have thought that would've clued us in, huh?

 

 The current plumbing (please excuse the bad lighting and nasty cabinet interior. Gross.

So instead of doing the planned studying/random DIY project combo this past Saturday, we spent the day at the hardware store and working under the sink to correct the problem. Because while we really do enjoy waterfalls, we don't quite enjoy them in our kitchen, thankyouverymuch.

And since the problem was our own fault to begin with (by not replacing a piece that should've been replaced), we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

So we let this serve as a true-life lesson: that while we do tackle everything as professionally and correctly as possible, the fact remains that we're not professionals, just amateur DIYers with a passion for remodeling and learning.

And that not everything has a happy ending round these parts.

Although we are certainly crossing our fingers that this time around the plumbing stays put and we do have a true happy ending in this case!

Anyone else detest plumbing? Do you have any DIY disasters to share? Surely we're not the only ones!

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