Living in New York City, usually in very old buildings, you expect some things to be a little faulty. A dripping sink, a noisy radiator, even in our last building when the bathroom ceiling caved in from above us due to a neighbor's flooding. In our current apartment, it's the bathroom. The sink leaves something to be desired in the draining department....slow,
slooowww draining. And the bathtub is so old, it has the shower head in the middle of the tub and requires 2 shower curtains because of the way it is exposed and not between 2 walls. Scott and I noticed on Sunday that both our drains seemed a little slow, and after a trip to Target (which left me sore because I bought far too much to carry home with me but did it anyways), we used some
draino-type solution and unclogged both the sink and the tub. We were happy as clams.
Yesterday morning, I noticed water creeping up my ankles as I showered and was saddened to realize after I got out of the shower, that the water was not receding at all. In denial, I told myself it would go down before Scott showered an hour or two later. However, while sitting in my Peds class, I received a frantic call from Scott to call our super because we had about 5 inches of water in our tub from both of our showers and the water wasn't going anywhere. A few minutes later, I received another call from Scott which went to voicemail, and he told me that his wise father, Steve, had suggested we try plunging the drain to see if we could unclog the mess ourselves. I got home from my 8 hours of pediatrics, and went to plunging. I got out 2 huge hairballs, one that resembled (in shape and size) a mouse. But the tub would still not drain. And now we had brown crap, assumingly from the pipes, sitting in the water. At this point, I ran up to the bodega near our apartment to buy some more draino, however all they had was generic extra strength drain cleaner for $2.50. I wasn't especially hopeful, but I bought the bottle anyways, proceeded to pour the whole thing in the tub and nothing happened.
So now our tub is full with brown muck and harsh declogging chemicals which are not in fact declogging anything, and Scott reminds me that he has an interview with a voice over agent tomorrow and it would be helpful if he could shower. His wise father once again suggests to use that we scoop our the water into the toilet and flush it down so at least Scott can stand in the shower tomorrow. After scooping most of the water our, I continue plunging until I realized I'm only plunging to procrastinate doing my homework. So I stop and write up a careplan and call my sister. I talk to her husband, also named Steve, who was a plumber's apprentice for about a year, and he says the only thing we can really do without having to call a plumber (we're a little short on funds now) is continue plunging and flush the drain with hot water occasionally. I try this for a while to no avail. My arms are now sore, and the plunging action has officially taken the place of my work out for the day. I think of it like CPR. People don't realize just how exhausting it is!
Scott finally arrives home from his play, to which no one attended so it was cancelled. Eventually, he takes up the plunging and flushing with hot water. But still no drainage. We're about to give up when Scott again talks to his wise father Steve who suggests yet another technique to increase the plunging pressure. We try this late into the night...until about 11:20pm to be exact when we received a phone call from the doorman that our downstairs neighbor had issued a noise complaint. (After speaking with him today, he informed me it sounded like the ceiling was going to come down on him and his wife.) Scott explained to the doorman that we were having some plumbing problems, to which he was scolded because we shouldn't be doing our own plumbing apparently (though I don't know if plunging can be considered plumbing at this rate.) He suggests we fill out a work order form (we had already tried to call the super but he never responded, and I was convinced we weren't allowed to have the building maintenance people work on our apartment because of some details in our sublet agreement.)
This morning, around 9am, a friendly maintenance man arrives at our door with some sort of plumbing equipment. Half an hour later, he leaves with the drains perfectly patent. Scott and I are sore and exhausted. We have company coming on Thursday and a party to give on Saturday. Who knew a little work order form could have saved us all that stress (and plunging.) Such is life I suppose!
