Sophie's Blog

Just a word of warning before you read further that this post is one of those “only a mother could love” ones about our daily lives. The kind of post comedians like to poke fun of where I will try (hopefully not in vain) to make an interesting read out of the uninteresting topic of our daily lives. Consider yourself warned.

It all started a couple weeks ago when our kitchen sink began to drain less and less. The dishwasher would defy gravity and drain UP into both sinks making us try and drain them both by playing a game similar to the water-puzzle in Die Hard 3. After 2 bottles of drain-o didn’t work, we called a exorcist plumber. He installed a new drain pipe underneath the house and relieved us of some burdensome money weighing down our bank account.
Even after all that, we were still having problems of water leaking somewhere between the brand new pipes and the sink. *sigh*
Not wanting to contribute any more to the plumber’s kids’ college fund, my father and I decided it best to take out the cabinet with the sink and fix it ourselves. Unfortunately, this also meant we had to face the project we had been doing our best to avoid for many months: replacing our entire kitchen floor…again! We had already replaced our kitchen floors shortly after buying the house. Unfortunately, we used a flooring system that comprised of interlocking wood laminate with stone tile glued to the top. It worked great for a while but our house is on pylons, not a slab, so the flexing of the floors broke the tile over time. Moral of the story is not to buy products Lowes is discontinuing for reasons they won’t tell you about.

Friday, we took out all of the kitchen stuff, appliances, cabinets and placed them Tetris-style in our dining room. We also stripped out the old tile revealing the disgusting linoleum that usually lies dormant in the darkness underneath our real flooring.
BEHOLD THE LURKING HORROR!!!

Yes folks, the Time-Machine of Uglyness revealed much that day. That’s not one, not two, but three nasty flooring choices the previous owners slapped down over the decades. I don’t even want to know what things looked like with that eye-searing yellow all over the place. *shudders*
Anywhoo, Saturday and Sunday were spent covering the nastiness with a layer of plywood we screwed into the floor to prevent soft spots and some nice ceramic tile. The photos I took don’t show off the colors very well but the tile is a nice mixture of dark grey with some subtle reds. That may sound funky but the grey blends in well with the metal appliances while the red warms up the wood cabinetry.

You still with me? Almost done here.
The best part of this whole thing (besides being done) was the plumbing problem turned out to just be with the pipe that came straight out of the wall under the sink. All we did was cut a new PVC one, screw it on and BOOM! Problem solved. I love it when a plan comes together.
There’s some more stuff about how fixing a single tile in our bathroom turned into 4 tiles, how we now have a proper pantry, and how my shoulders hurt so bad on Monday that my stomach felt sick but I’ve said enough. You did a good job reading this far. Rub your sore eyes and get yourself a glass of something cool and refreshing.

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