It Runs In The Family

Aside from being a pretty funny play written by the Brit Ray Cooney “It Runs In The Family” also refers to the trait that my brothers and I share. We like to work with our hands. Yes, I have two brothers, I also have two sisters, but they have not shown themselves symptomatic of the same affliction. My youngest brother sent me this recently. He and his lovely significant other own a house. They have been working on it since purchasing it, fixing and upgrading.

So [when we bought the place] the home inspector never got to the crawl space, because as soon as he identified that there was an active rat population down there, he would go no further. I can't imagine why, but... Since then we have taken care of the roommates in the crawl space, but have been procrastinating about getting down there to cleanup. Well, because it is a nasty job, and there were so many more enjoyable jobs to do above ground. So, last weekend I made the plunge. I had to dig out some trenches beneath the heat ducts so I could fit my body under them to get to the front of the house. On my way I found two old, no longer inhabited, rat nests. Oh joy. When I finally reached the kitchen though was when reality truly hit. We had a massive plumbing leak in our sink drain! Oh and the best part, an inch and a half deep pool of sludge contained above the visqueen. Mmmmm yummy. This is when crisis mode hit, and yours truly had to get to work. Well with a hard days work, and magnificent support from Laurel we got the offending pipe removed, assessed, and its replacement purchased and ready to go for the morning. This brings us to Sunday. I went back down and Laurel and I got the plumbing put back together. So what happens now, one might ask, is to test it. Guess what. It was clogged. So I set about snaking the drain, first in the kitchen under the sink and then by removing the new pipe in the crawl space and snaking out into the yard. This worked and the water began to flow. However, we then noticed a gurgling sound out by the front door. So, what happen next you ask? Well let me just say the shovels came out, and the excavating ensued. We dug between the house and the walkway to find an old pipe that looked like someone shoved a shovel through it a long time ago, wrapped it with a T-shirt and filled it back in. Luckily there was still enough sticking out of the foundation wall to cut the broken section off and still have enough to reattach to. We then dug up the other side of the walkway and exposed the rest of the pipe. We tunneled under the walkway. While I made a supply run Laurel finished the digging and cut the new offending section of pipe out, and we replaced it when I returned. And presto, we had a functioning drain that did not contribute to the compost pile in the crawl space, and did not feed the plants by out patio, and to think we never knew we had a problem. Sure you don't want to come over to our place for a work party? And I haven't even gotten to the petrified rat, but maybe I will keep that until next time.

Sound like fun?

My other brother can swing a hammer like us, but his real love is cars. My first car was a 1976 Triumph Spitfire. He’s got his hands on an MG Midget. I don’t know the year. Maybe he’ll chime in with more particulars. No doubt the thing will be a beauty when he’s done.



The Fox Brothers; Making the world a nicer looking place.