Plumbing. The saga continues.

My parents are seasoned DIYers. They know the Home Depot like the back of their hand. They’ve worked together on projects for over 35 years now (finished basements, exterior painting, various plumbing, tree trimming, etc, etc…) There is a rhythm to their back and forth and I think it’s a comfortable working relationship. My mother is often the directing the action, my dad is often the person in charge of executing the plan.

I think that my parents had a lot of fun this weekend trying to repair plumbing with the added component called “Jeremy”. Jeremy thinks a lot like a Martin and very little like a Lee (that would make sense, huh?). I have had 14 years of making decisions with Jeremy, but my parents have far less experience actually working with Jeremy and it was nice to see them amuse each other with their different thought processes.

Martins are less impulsive and more thoughtful and willing to consider many options before finding the “right way”. The downside of the Martin philosophy is that it takes a long time to actually start a project, and it’s usually not the most straightforward approach, but it’s usually done right. Lees are more prone to quick decisions and kind of half-ass fixes that are OK, but not very pretty. The upside to the Lee philosophy is that is usually gets fixed quicker and cheaper, but it sometimes it’s a little clunky.

Anyways, it took a few hours to realize that the leak was in multiple places and in places that we could not see. Basically, I’ve been arguing that we need to cut a hole in the ceiling and Jeremy’s been reluctant to do so. I argue that only when the ceiling is cut will we be able to see the actual leak and do something about it. Jeremy thinks that if we cut the ceiling, we will never repair the hole in the ceiling and even if we did repair the hole, we would need to get the whole ceiling painted and we would not do it for years because we are too cheap (so true) – so we should try to replace the gasket in the drain (which might, possibly, be the source of the leak but we don’t know for sure because we didn’t cut the whole in the ceiling) which would not involve defacing the ceiling and only after the gasket is replaced will we absolutely be sure that we need to cut the ceiling. And thus, we discussed:

A consensus was reached that nothing would be done to jeopardize the plumbing this week because Jeremy and my parents both had to leave the East Coast on Monday, and leaving me with the kids and no plumbing on the 2nd floor was too dire a situation to even contemplate. So NO! the leak is still not fixed.