i don't expect project scope creep for just washing my face.

[rmd]

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.

Comments

[radioactiverich.livejournal.com]

My tool of choice is usually an unbent wire hanger, so much so that when I need something like this I generally say "I need a tool" and the folks in my house know what it is. (That, and when I need a specific other kind of tool, I'll refer to it by name.)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

those work well for the purpose, too. i had expected that there'd be a short piece of electrician snake around, but the spoke was the first thing i found that would do the job.

[gayathri.livejournal.com]

this made my day. :) Hot Dyke Tool Action for my morning coffee!

[evwhore.livejournal.com]

Back in college when a friend and I were assembling bed lofts in our respective rooms, we had three different jigs/shims/etc. for ensuring consistent spacing/right angles etc. which were variously referred to as the Thingy, the Device, and the Apparatus.

[muffyjo]

WOW! Man, when you clean a drain, you really clean it! I'll say!

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Yay for clean drains! Although I confess I can't help but wonder how a sink drain ended up with so much hair in it. :)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

me, three cats, a long-haired girlfriend, and about 8 years since the sink was installed.

[annathepiper]

I had to read this post just by the subject line alone. Man. I'm impressed. :)

[kjc.livejournal.com]

About once a year or so, when the tub starts to drain noticeably slower (i.e., I finish my shower in a bit of standing water), instead of dumping evil chemicals down the tub drain, I unscrew the slot-head screw holding the lame-ass "filter" (a piece of metal with holes in it) and use a pair of pliers to remove my hair-monsters. Then I clean all the parts and put it all back together and the tub goes back to draining like normal.

Until the following year.

It's been long enough since we moved in (and the water is moving slow enough) that I fear I might need to figure out how to unlink the sink plug thinger from its apparatus and do the same over there soon.

Ew.

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Thanks for reminding me of something that I really gotta do.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I just wasn't sure how all that hair got into the sink, that's all. I have that issue with shower/tub drains, but never with a sink. That's kinky stuff!