Mr Potatohead

After the great potato peel adventure of two nights ago, Dan decided to take matters into his own hands. When a full bottle of Drano failed to work, I tried the old vinegar and baking soda followed by boiling water trick, hoping that the Drano had opened it up just enough to let the elements take over. No go. Still clogged, albeit not a full sink full. I went downstairs to check it all out, then came up and told Dan that I thought the problem wasn't in the kitchen sink trap, but in the trap for the dishwasher.

That's when he became a plumber, which usually ends in some kind of minor disaster.

He went down and eyeballed the entire situation, then wondered aloud why there was a piece of PVC routed off the normal route, but capped. "If that comes off, then maybe it'll let it all drain," said he, right as he yanked it off. The result? Mount Vesuvius, along with a lot of loud expletives -- enough to yank Seth off his computer chair and run downstairs to see what all the ruckus was about. By now, Dan had capped the entire thing again, but a few minutes and a few buckets later, he yanked it off again, and a disgusting Niagara falls ensued. After the buckets were empty, and Dan had plugged it all up again, he told me to go try the sink again.

You guessed it. It was still clogged. This was, as I told him, because he wasn't working in the area that was clogged -- he was working on the kitchen sink area, and the actual clog was further down, by the dishwasher. He fiddled around with it, and couldn't manhandle it loose.

That's when the hack saw came out.

Now let me tell you, a hack saw and plumbing is probably never a good thing, especially when being handled by an amateur. He started hacking, and Seth, standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, took a front frontal dose of greasy potato peel nastiness, soaking him from his head down. As if that wasn't enough, the pseudo-plumber asked Mr Potato Head to hold the bucket while he hacked away, which meant that he got it again until the bucket got positioned correctly. The poor kid may never be the same.

Of course, neither will the plumbing, because after hacking it all open, it couldn't be put back together again, and though the sink was drained, it was completely unusable, so it ended up with faux crime scene tape over it, with DO NOT USE written in purple Sharpie all over it. Dan put calls in to two plumbing friends of ours, but after not getting a response -- and Jill accidentally turning on the dishwasher to nowhere with Dan right underneath it -- we finally called a plumbing company. The end result?

1) A $1200 bill to completely replumb the kitchen, which we've known since we moved in 16 years ago wasn't plumbed right, because the entire thing is clogged from the dishwasher to eternity.

2) Thomas getting one hell of a deal on Dan's Town Car, which he sold to him to pay the plumbing bill and

3) Seth messaging me on Facebook, saying that after a 30 minute bath, he'll probably still smell awful. He's probably right.

At least at some point today, I may be able to use the kitchen sink and dishwasher again, and we can put it all behind us, till the next natural disaster happens in the land of Utter Chaos.