I decided to take a break and share a story with you that is only funny to me now because I've lived through it and will {hopefully} never have to live through it again......
The number one thing that everyone comments on when they come over to our house is our toilets. I know, I know, what a random thing to get people talking. The reason they get so much attention is because they have a dual flush button because they're supposed to be high efficiency...everyone's two-cents is that it's very "European"!
This is a picture of the top of our toilets...see the European flair?!
When we first moved in, I thought they were pretty awesome. We can control how much water we used depending on which button we pushed - what a great way to save water and put a little extra moolah into our pockets. It wasn't long before our master bath toilet quickly began to drive me and Stephen crazy. It would randomly decide to run and we never could figure out the rhyme behind the reason. We had lived in the house a little over a year when last October, it was literally 2am in the morning on a Friday morning (report cards+principal observation for me; studying for a test for Stephen) when we decided to go to bed. We did our usual routine and both thought it was random that our toilet did an unusual gurgle noise before we left the bathroom. It wasn't long before I could tell by Stephen's breathing that he had fallen asleep. Quickly thereafter I began to smell a horrible smell that I can only describe as "dog fart". I placed the blame on Stephen, assuming he was smelling up the room (of course he doesn't appreciate this part of the story). That's when the toilet did another *gurgle gurgle* and it woke Stephen up.
***NOTE: it's not a good sign if your toilet gurgles. Not a good sign AT ALL.***
Stephen wakes up and wonders what the noise is. I'm quick to inform him of his dog fart problem only to quickly remember a horrible sewage story that my friend Mandy told me about a house she lived in during college. Oh my gosh...what if the dog fart smell wasn't Stephen after all??????? Stephen gets up to check out what's wrong with the toilet. What comes next can send me into a fit of laughter if I think enough about the different reactions that occurred.
First, let me tell you that Stephen was blessed with a wonderful sense of smell. I love the man with all my heart, but he's sometimes a little bit dramatic about smells that don't appeal to him. If he's helping me clean out the refrigerator, he'll hold his nose, sometimes even turn his head in disgust over the very smallest smells. Imagine this blessing of smell as he enters our bathroom to discover....
...a bathtub and toilet filling up with sewage. Yup - you just read that correctly. Sewage. That's old crap, people. Picture it: Stephen, screaming from the bathroom while gagging and dry heaving. There were a lot of senses being over stimulated: smells, sights, sounds. It was cRaZy. He asks me where our plunger is and I honestly can't remember...at this point in time, we haven't used it since Chicago - a year and a half earlier...it must be in the basement. He leaves our bedroom to go to the basement only to be greeted by a gurgling toilet in the hall bathroom. Do you remember my note from earlier? A gurgling toilet is NOT a happy toilet. Imagine the blessing of Stephen's sense of smell as he enters the hall bathroom to discover...
...a bathtub and toilet filling up with sewage. Yup. Sewage - old crap, people. AHHHHHH!!!! Now, I know some of you are thinking, "How does sewage fill up your bathtub? Where is it coming from?". Let me explain - you know that circular metal cover that is screwed onto your tub underneath your faucet? Sewage was seeping from behind this contraption and filling our bathtubs - that's a plural "s" - more than one.
This isn't our bathtub, but I figured it could work to show you that circular metal piece underneath the faucet - that's where all the action was taking place!
Stephen ran to the basement to discover that our plunger had never made it to our new house but was still hanging out at my parents from when we were living there before we got our house. Awesome. I, of course, got on my phone. Stephen was super annoyed with me, thinking I was updating my Facebook status, "What are you doing?! Don't put this on Facebook!!!" What was he thinking?! Of course I wasn't on a social media while sewage is taking over our upstairs - I was googling, "sewage is filling my bathtubs and toilets". I knew for a fact we couldn't be the only people in the world that this had ever happened to. While I quickly learned that we, indeed, were not alone in having this problem, nothing was really helpful to me at 2am in the morning.
Thankfully, after a few minutes of the sewage filling the tub and the toilet, the levels seemed to stop rising. Stephen and I stood there contemplating what we should do when all of a sudden we heard some more gurgling and then a "whoosh" as the sewage began to descend back down the drains. With disbelief and relief on our faces we watched our poop problems disappear before our eyes. What the?! Don't get me wrong - we were grateful, but what now?!?! My wonderful husband scrubbed the tubs with bleach and bleached the toilets and we both decided to go to bed and deal with it the next day.
On Friday, Stephen called plumber after plumber only to be received with a, "We don't deal with that kind of stuff." Really? You're a plumber. It's like me saying that I don't teach kids that are really difficult to teach. Isn't that your job??? Finally he lined up a plumber to come on Monday and take a look at everything. In the meantime, we were afraid that something might be up with the main drain in our house (after googling the night before at 2am in the morning we read many warnings about this) and so we decided to not use any plumbing at our house. Thankfully we live across the street from my parents (have I shared that with you, blogworld???) and so anytime a flush or shower was necessary, we walked across the street.
Fast forward to Monday when the plumber came to our house and seemed to find NOTHING WRONG. What?! You mean that sewage can just randomly decide to start gurgling its way into my life whenever it pleases?! I was scarred - scarred for life and there was nothing wrong to lead to this poopy problem?!
I'm going to leave you there for now. Of course, there's more to this story, but you're a champ and you've already read a lot. If you're a homeowner, you know that as much of a blessing that it is to own your own home, sometimes it stinks. Literally.
Do you have any traumatizing plumping stories or am I the only one???
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