I encountered project scope creep this morning. Or, "How I started by brushing my teeth and ended up needing channel-lock pliers and a bike spoke."
it started when I was brushing my teeth and washing my face at the bathroom sink. Leaning over to spit out toothpaste, i noticed that old-sponge mildewy smell. "oh," i thought to myself, "i must be overdue for swapping out the hand towel next to the sink" and then realized that, no, i'd changed that out the other day. a quick sniff confirmed that the towel was still fine.
another quick sniff over the sink identified the drain as the source of the smell. must be a bit of hair caught in it. i spin off the drain stopper and can see a bit of hair stuck to the side.
so, i finished up my immediate sink-related activities and with minty fresh breath, went and grabbed something to fish around in the sink drain.
i couldn't find a short piece of electrical snake (aka 'fish tape'), but i did find a bicycle spoke in a box of random metal bits and figured that - with the end bend into a hook - would work for hooking bits of hair or whatever.
*poke poke*
up comes a clump of hair -- a mix of short cat hairs, long claudia hairs, and medium-length rmd hairs. and then up comes another. and another. and another. at this point, i figure maybe the other direction is preferred. so i don some gloves and grab the channel-lock pliers (i forget why they ended up on the radiator cover in the bathroom, but they were there and thus even convenient for the task at hand) and a bucket and pull the plug out of the drain trap. *sploosh* goes a bit of water and another big clump of hairy evil.
so i poked around in the pipe some more with the spoke, and then cleaned up the drain plug, reinstalled it, and collected a big handful of hairy evil and plunked it in the trash bucket. then i cleaned the sink with lysol and then flushed the drain with a big bucket-full of very hot water.
and then i continued my morning, in the hope that the drain will be set for another very long while.
it started when I was brushing my teeth and washing my face at the bathroom sink. Leaning over to spit out toothpaste, i noticed that old-sponge mildewy smell. "oh," i thought to myself, "i must be overdue for swapping out the hand towel next to the sink" and then realized that, no, i'd changed that out the other day. a quick sniff confirmed that the towel was still fine.
another quick sniff over the sink identified the drain as the source of the smell. must be a bit of hair caught in it. i spin off the drain stopper and can see a bit of hair stuck to the side.
so, i finished up my immediate sink-related activities and with minty fresh breath, went and grabbed something to fish around in the sink drain.
i couldn't find a short piece of electrical snake (aka 'fish tape'), but i did find a bicycle spoke in a box of random metal bits and figured that - with the end bend into a hook - would work for hooking bits of hair or whatever.
*poke poke*
up comes a clump of hair -- a mix of short cat hairs, long claudia hairs, and medium-length rmd hairs. and then up comes another. and another. and another. at this point, i figure maybe the other direction is preferred. so i don some gloves and grab the channel-lock pliers (i forget why they ended up on the radiator cover in the bathroom, but they were there and thus even convenient for the task at hand) and a bucket and pull the plug out of the drain trap. *sploosh* goes a bit of water and another big clump of hairy evil.
so i poked around in the pipe some more with the spoke, and then cleaned up the drain plug, reinstalled it, and collected a big handful of hairy evil and plunked it in the trash bucket. then i cleaned the sink with lysol and then flushed the drain with a big bucket-full of very hot water.
and then i continued my morning, in the hope that the drain will be set for another very long while.
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Date: 2010-03-06 06:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-06 09:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-08 10:09 pm (UTC)