Because plumbers are people, too

You know that feeling of impending dread you get when you realize something in the house isn't working as it should? It's one of the worst places to be when you own a home. As you watch the [fill in failure mode here...icicle-bound furnace, leaky toilet, shattered window, backed up sink...] you begin to make a mental calculation of what all this is going to cost you.

So as I watched the drain in our kitchen sink gradually slow down over a period of weeks, I hoped, in that knowingly hopeless way that all unhandy homeowners do, that it would magically fix itself. Basic Drano delayed the inevitable, but when it completely stopped draining at 9:39 p.m. one night last week, I knew it was time to get jiggy with it.

I noodled around under the vanity and felt water on the outside of the pipes (uh oh). I looked up at the underside of the basket, where the drain joins the pipe, and saw light (double uh oh.) The threaded connector to the basket had rusted out and was leaking. Two problems in one...oh joy!

It was now 9:45. The hardware store closed at 10. I snapped a few photos of the pipes and sink and tore out of the house. Got there with a couple of minutes to spare, and a very helpful employee, Rod, talked me through everything I needed to know about replacing the basket and clearing the blockage using the little opening at the bottom of the trap. He called it something complex-sounding. I nodded like an obedient puppy before disappearing into the bitterly cold night.

Back home, I dismantled the whole enchilada and prayed to the plumbing gods that I'd somehow manage to get it all back together again. I opened the bottom thingie (scientific term, apparently) without crushing it with my pliers and rooted around with my trusty auger (so that's what it's used for!) We won't discuss what I pulled out of the trap, or how I almost gave up when, after test-draining it for the eighth time, I realized I had managed to move the blockage well downstream and virtually out of reach.

By now my hands were filthy, and my back was aching from twisting every which way under the cabinet. Yet for some reason I wasn't ticked off. I'm not sure why, but I felt like a kid playing with Lego. Adult Lego. Very expensive Lego. And the initial terror of flooding the basement and making my family homeless had been replaced with a "work the problem" mentality. I knew I could do this. It would probably be a little ugly, and any plumber worth his salt would laugh at my ineptitude. Manyana, I thought. This is what adulthood looks like. And I like it.

After a couple of hours of slow progress - using the auger, my finger and various other implements to gradually extract, um, stuff from the pipe - I finally managed to get it delightfully clear. Water flowed again. The dishwasher was no longer hobbled. My wife was happy. My kids weren't flooded out and homeless. I wasn't facing a huge plumbing bill.

It felt good to have fixed it with my own hands. For once, anyway.

Your turn: Do you DIY? Why/why not?