Winter Wonderland

Robbie and I spent this weekend in Springfield, and we had a great time.

It snowed 11 flippin inches on Thursday and Friday, so we had a real treat to arrive home to.

Saturday we helped my mom move furniture from my grampa’s house. Carrie and Steve, my BFF’s, came through in the clutch to come over and help. We couldn’t have done it without them.

My mom’s washing machine was on its last leg, so we brought my grampa’s washer over to replace it. Well, everything was going as planned, Rob & I even went to the hardware store to buy new hoses for it, until the LAST possible second… then all heck broke lose.

Robbie was tightening the hose onto the hot water spout in the wall, and the whole spout just broke off in his hand, and hot water started spraying EVERYWHERE! The look on his face was excellent. The thing has corroded all the way through and just snapped off the copper pipe.

The next few minutes involved me, Robbie, my mom and my uncle scrambling around the house trying to find the water shut off. I finally got to it, and turned it off… nothing happened.

My poor sister was down in the laundry room with a shop-vac, sucking up the water as it was shooting out of the wall. It was all pretty hilarious.

When the main shut off didn’t work, Robbie and my uncle started digging in the snow in the front yard to find the water meter. They couldn’t find it, mostly because I told them where to look in the opposite end of the yard. Haha. My memory did not serve me well that day.

Well, since it was the hot water shooting out of the wall (thankfully) I decided to try shutting it off at the hot water heater. So I crawled into the tiny closet and climbed up to try and figure it out. There were about 50 different shut off levers on 85 different pipes, but using my skills of bomb-diffusion learned from TV, I properly assessed the situation, and turned the water off on the first try.

So, after the crisis was halfway averted, and the water was not spraying out of the wall anymore, and my sister & Robbie were soaking wet, we called the plumber to come out and replace the spout for $150 an hour on a Saturday.

Apparently we interrupted him in his Saturday Party Mode, because he smelled like alcohol.

The whole situation was pretty hilarious.

Then, to top off the day, the pilot light had somehow gone out on the hot water heater, so none of us could take hot showers for the rest of the night.

Good thing we went sledding with daveheinzel.com and gotshoo.com to make everything alright again. Check their websites out for photos. I can’t get my camera to work on this computer, so I will have to check back in with photos later.

Photo courtesy: www.gotshoo.com

All in all, it was a successful weekend, and quite typical of the Gladish family whenever we try to do anything involving appliances.

Ah memories…



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