Mrs. Handy Woman Conquers Kitchen Sink!

As you have probably noticed by the projects I undertake, I am not afraid of doing many things around the house. I like solving problems, practical problems, the solutions to which make my life better. When the drain in my bathroom sink was too slow to be called a drain, however, I was a bit timid to tackle that by myself. After watching my dad do it nearly a year ago, I realized it wasn't the scary task I had imagined. So when the current problem came up, I courageously dove in to get to the bottom of it.

We have lived in our house for about 15 months. During the last few of those months, an odor has been growing in intensity. Hubby and I traced it to the kitchen sink. In the last couple weeks, his solution was to put the drain cap in the sink and leave it there continually. This was quite less than a satisfactory solution in my book. It seemed like that side of the sink was always about an inch deep in standing water. And then pulling the plug out was disgusting and difficult. And it made the smell worse.

Tonight I couldn't take it anymore. I had to get to the bottom of it, if it was the last thing I did (plumbing-wise). (I'm speaking in terms of "tonight" because it's 3:45 AM, and it sure feels like night to me! I'll get to the insomnia part of the story later, I promise.)

I had a sink full of dishes that weren't helping the room to smell any rosier, so I took care of all of that first, while I knew I had a working sink.

After the dishes were done, and Hubby got home from church, it was time to dismantle the underside of the kitchen sink. I thought for sure there had to be a horrid mess in the trap (the bend in the pipe), so I started by taking that off. Surprisingly, it was nearly clean, except for a tiny little mess at one end of the pipe.

The next pipe up from that one was where the garbage disposal met up with the drain. I took that piece off, and it was clean, except for where the garbage disposal pipe met in. Aha, here's the culprit, I thought. (Hubby was watching me take things apart this whole time. He also looked down the drain with the flashlight. He's not very handy.) I was a little afraid of taking that pipe off that connected the garbage disposal to the drain. It looked harder to undo than the rest. It has a metal collar on it with a metal screw, and the rest just have PVC parts that screw on, like a nut (I don't know what things are called). I tried to get that metal screw to turn, but I couldn't. Thankfully Hubby got it loose.

That was the problem. That nasty pipe was all black inside. Imagine an odor somewhere in the neighborhood of what it smells like when you leave your wet clothes in the washer too long, crossed with dirt, crossed with... I don't know what, but something nasty, and that's what it smelled like.

I didn't want to touch it, so I didn't really. I put all the pipes I took off in a big basin with bleach-water and let it sit. My plan was to let it sit overnight, and put everything back together in the morning. I went to bed.

I think I may have slept for a little while, but I couldn't help waking up and being paranoid that someone (I) was going to come downstairs in the morning and turn on the water at the kitchen and make a huge mess before things were put back together. And there was also the fear that once I put everything back together it was going to leak all over the place, because I'd do it wrong.

So at 2:24, I went downstairs to put my sink back together. Before I did that, though, I got out my under-the-sink toothbrush, which has been relegated to the nastiest of cleaning tasks, and cleaned out the nasty pipe. It came clean rather easily after sitting in bleach water for over 4 hours. I got the rest of the pipes sparkling and put them all back together. I got the flashlight under the sink and turned the water on, looking for leaks, and there were NONE! Yippee!! Then I poured the bleach-water down the garbage disposal side of the sink, and ran it with some ice cubes, which is supposed to help clean it out. That all worked too, with no leaks. SUCCESS!!!

The whole house smells like chlorine bleach, which is WAY better than the other odor. But it's still not right, you know?

Then I went back to bed at 2:42. And I haven't been back to sleep since.

Insomnia... ain't it great?

And this whole time laying in bed, I've been hearing, "Let Me Go," by Cake, playing in my head. (If you're not familiar with Guitar Hero, you may get a kick out of this video. Cake hasn't made their own video for this song, or if they have, I couldn't find it on YouTube. The only other one I found was an amateur job, and I didn't want to subject you all to that.)