Wrath of the Old House Plumbing Gods

We seem to have a recurring theme going at our house...plumbing problems.  It had already been too much day.  Lots of bickering and squabbling to the point where I felt like I was absolutely going to lose it.  I decided to gently persuade the kids to play upstairs in the play room for a while.  Yeah.  That's it.  Gentle persuasion.  So there I was, having a peaceful period of time by myself downstairs when it got to be too peaceful, if you know what I mean.  Like in the wild west when it was quiet...too quiet.  Something was amiss.

Sure enough, the piercing shriek came.  "MY WET!  MY WEEEEEEEET!!!!"  I ran up there thinking that Lawrence had been too busy playing to stop and go to the bathroom.  Boy was I in for a treat.  Yes, he was wet.  He was wet *all over*.  I began taking his clothes off to send down the laundry chute, when I heard a sound.  A trickling water kind of sound.  The bathroom was flooding!  Happy Day.

I couldn't get quite the whole story, but Lawrence admitted that he needed to wash his hands and put water in the sink.  I tried to find out if he put a toy or something down the drain, but he only talked some gibberish and gestured to 'the dark hole' in the sink.  

Yes, that is a yellow policeman duckie floating in the sink.  

I called Phillip at work and told him to bring home a bottle of drain cleaner.  Meanwhile after the a few hours, the water eventually went down.  I took apart the plumbing underneath the sink to see if perhaps a missing toy might be in there.  There was a bit of sink gunk, but no blockage that I could see.  I washed everything and put the plumbing pipes back together and gave it a whirl.  Still plugged.  Crap.

Phillip came home with the drain cleaner.  Drain cleaner indeed.  I'm used to working with the lye-based stuff.  Pour a little in, a couple of hours later, flush it with cold water.  Done.  He couldn't find the regular stuff, so he brought home this sulfuric acid stuff.

Saturday night, when I was about to get Lydia down for bed, I thought I'd pour down the drain cleaner, get her to sleep, then do the flushing with cold water.  I took a gander at the bottle.  Skull and crossbones everywhere.  I was reading the directions and it was just shy of saying you needed to be in radiation suits to use the stuff.  

Phillip had me get some safety glasses and gloves from the basement before I started.  He told me I ought to get long sleeves and pants on too, but I was just ready to get the stuff in there and be done with it.  So I poured it down the drain.  Immediately, an evil sounding hissing began, and smoke started coming out of the drain.  Yikes!  I quickly slammed the cup over the drain (per the directions, the drain hole should be covered) and got the hell outta there.  It smelled like rotten eggs.  I don't know why, because I don't recall putting rotten eggs down the drain.  

Fifteen minutes later, I went back in there to see how things were going.  I took the cup off of the drain.  A little sludge-y but nothing to write home about.  I poured in about 8 ounces of water to get the flushing started.  Holy Eruption, Batman!  All of a sudden this black sludge started bubbling up and hissing some more.  It was getting bigger and bigger.  I was afraid to put more water in it.  And the smell.  It was horrible.  The whole upstairs began to stink like rotten eggs.  

Finally the bubbling leveled off and we put in more water.  But the water wasn't flowing through.  I looked underneath the sink and noticed a small trickle leaking from the pipe joints.  So of course, I reached in and tried to tighten the connection to stop the leak.  Big, huge mistake.  The pipe came off in my hand and black sludge-y acid came shooting from the pipe all over my legs and onto the floor.  It just kept coming!  

I yelled, "It's getting on me!  It's getting on me!" to which Phillip came running in there.  I got in the tub and started soaping and rinsing my legs like crazy.  He ran downstairs for the baking soda to neutralize the acid which was continuing to shoot out all over the floor.  I guess it's good to have a person trained in chemicals around for times like these.  I just would've gotten a ton of chemical burns trying to clean up that mess!  Anyhoo, after three entire boxes of baking soda used, lots of mopping, rinsing and mopping again, we now have an acid-cleaned bathroom floor.  We finally finished up around 1am.  Lawrence had fallen asleep while playing with his head under the covers and Lydia was still chirping and tossing stuffed animals happily from her bed.  I have no idea what went on with them, as we were 100 percent focused on black sludge all evening.  Archie was given the direction to keep them in their room and that's what he did.  

While the whole house stunk like rotten eggs for a couple of days, we must've somehow appeased the Old House Plumbing Gods.  On the up side, our water is now free flowing, baby!  Free flowing!