The Plugged Sink from Hell

Thursday night, our sink got plugged. No biggie, right, we have had that before. So I first ran the garbage disposal, which usually fixes the problem. Hmmm, still a few inches of standing water, guess it didn't work this time.

Out came the plunger, the solver of many problems. Started plunging and plunging and plunging, expecting the resolution of the plug at any time.

I plunged.

And I plunged.

And I plunged some more.

Dh plunged. And he plunged. And he plunged some more.

I cursed.

But the sink still was plugged.

The husband said 'No problem, I'll just use a snake'. So the snake came out, the solver of all problems. He snaked, and he snaked, and he snaked some more. Some crap came out, but obviously not enough, because the sink still was plugged. I cursed.

Hubbie doesn't like to use those chemicals to unplug the sink, but I told him that God wouldn't have given them to us if he didn't want us to use them. I ignored hubbie and went to the supermarket to get four BIG bottles of unplugging chemicals.

It said to use 1/5 of a bottle, so I poured the whole bottle down the drain. If 1/5 is good, than 5/5 is five times as good, right? We let it sit, expecting it to work its magic. It didn't. I cursed. I plunged, figuring that that would solve it. It didn't.

I poured another bottle down the drain and waited for the magic. I invented some new swear words. The sink was still plugged. I plunged some more. The sink still was plugged.

Four bottles after the start of this exercise, and almost a day later, the sink still was plugged. I cursed, and called my hubby to tell him to figure out a plumber who would be willing to come on Friday afternoon. He conveniently didn't pick up the phone. I was driving around, chauffeuring kids, so I didn't want to deal with the whole plumber mess. Neither did I want to pay the excorbitant amount he would charge for fixing our problem.

By now, not only did the sink not drain, but the garbage disposal had started leaking, to add insult to injury.

Friday night, hubbie once again got out the snake and got out more crap. Sink still was plugged.

The counters were overflowing with dirty dishes. We had a hard time adding any more dirty dishes to the precariously balanced, and dirty stacks. Usually I just do them by hand when the dishwasher is broken, but this sink made both dishwasher and hand washing unavailable.

We looked at each other and despaired. I decided to just move out and have the new owner of the house deal with the mess. Hubbie didn't agree.

He showed me the 'cleanout plug' in the basement, which I had NO idea about, and rather wouldn't have known about at all. He hoped that opening this and cleaning out crap from there might solve the problem. The cleanout plug turned out to be located over about seven years worth of basement dumpings. You know the 'Hmmm, don't know what I'll do with this, for now I'll just put it in the basement' stacks.

Our whole night was spent carrying those stacks and stacks of boxes, and shoes, and dead mice to other locations in the basement. I didn't even check whether there were cleanout plugs over those new locations.

By now it was 2am and we both didn't feel like dealing with the plug. So we relaxed, ate chocolate, played go, and went to bed. The sink still wasn't draining, the dishes still hadn't been washed.

This morning, hubbie went downstairs and opened the plug. He did not wear a rain jacket, which had been recommended in the websites he had been surfing. Luckily, not too much water came out. But lots of crap did, snake did a great job. He is still working at it.

Just in case, I am surfing real estate websites today.