Adventures in plumbing

Today when Isabella went down for her nap (after we went to Chuck E Cheese's with Katie and Andy) I decided that I would put the shelves up in the garage. I've been meaning to get that done for a long time I thought, "what better time to do it then when Liza is gone and I can surprise her when she gets back in town?"

So, I got on the ladder and put the top piece where I thought it would be good and drove my pilot nail. I hit a stud on the first try. I went over two holes and hit another stud. Turns out that the smart people who designed the shelves knew the normal spacing of studs in a typical wall. How handy. I got it all level and screwed in to place, and then I started putting in the vertical supports that hold the shelving brackets. There were four pieces with 4 screws down the wall for each. They all went in to the stud, so all was well.

I got them all put up and started putting on the shelves. When I put on the bottom shelf, the 3rd rung pulled out from the wall and I could tell that the screw had not hit the stud. Strange. I pulled it out and tried a longer screw. It hit air as well. That was weird. So, it took the longer screw and tried it in the bottom hole on that one. It hit a stud and I screwed it in.

Then I went to work putting the stuff that had been all over one side of the garage up on the shelves. All was well until I saw water coming out the bottom of the sheet rock below the last screw I had put in. I got the drill and backed it out and then I really heard the spray of water. I put it right back in and had to contain the desire to curse. A lot. I called my mom and she said to go turn off the water to the house. Good idea. I did that after a mad scramble to figure out where one might do that and then had to call a plumber.

I found that Rotorooter is the one and only plumber that does not charge extra on Saturday (before 7pm) and they got someone over within a half hour. I pulled out the sheet rock around where I had put the screw in and saw that if I had been a 1/2 inch in any direction I would have missed it completely. It did a nice gentle 's' curve right though that space. I decided then it must just be an "character building" event gift from God because the chances of hitting it were so slim.

I then took Isabella out to show her what happened. She said, "Why did you break the wall?" "I had to cut it out to get to the place where I put the screw through the water pipe."
She replied, "Why would you put a screw through a water pipe?" I had no response to that.

The plumber showed up and said "no problem" and started to work. She cut the part out that I hit and then started roughing up the copper on the top part, then the bottom part of the pipe. As soon as she touched the bottom part, it came off in her hand. She came and got me and said, "I know why you hit that pipe." "Really?" I replied. "Yes, if you had not hit it, then this would have burst on its own. Who knows if you would have been home or at work or what. It would have caused a lot of damage."

It was nice to see that, though it was a character building event, it was also a blessing in disguise and I got to genuinely practice "being thankful in all things."